Your mother died in fear.
No one was with her.
You didn’t want to be with her.
The last time you saw her, two months before,
while you were saying good-bye to her,
her turkey-claw hand shot up like a viper
from under her wheelchair lap-cover
to clasp your hand and keep you with her,
to bind you to her,
to not let you leave her ever.
I CAN’T STAY HERE
she screamed like a toddler, over and over,
insane with fear, lost in fear,
without a mind to guide her,
her brain saying horrific truths to her.
You were on the Mercy Home basement floor,
by the nurse’s station, where she slept in her wheelchair,
because she couldn’t be alone ever,
because the moment another human being left her
she was left with her fear, which instantly seized her,
so she couldn’t sleep in her room or ever go there
except when a nurse took her for a sitting shower
and stripped her and undid her diaper
and propped her weeping under the water
and soaped her and rinsed her and dried her and dressed her
and lifted her back into her wheelchair.
Did she know the man standing over her
was her son, saying good-bye to her?
Your hand was any hand, a human tether.
She wanted you to take her home in a car
but the Mercy Home was her home—she had no other—
she meant home with her husband and children fifty years before.
Already have an account? Log in
Join KR for even more to read.
