In the end, my mother’s shoulders, barely covered and quivering,
were like birds.
Once, I made a dress
for her, the fabric creamy white, the print a single brown tree
spanning the width, with stark branches.
It was 1974. I was fourteen. Each night,
I taught myself to sew, feeding
the fabric through the foot, thinking
how surprised she would be. I remember
seeing her in it, how we’d both loved the gesture, the achievement,
and though it fit poorly, the print
was enough for us. She wore it once and never again, let me see
her walk out the door in it.
Maybe
love’s architecture is exposed when we try and fail at what we mean.
Outside the hospital, winter had flayed everything, the trees
charcoaled against the sky, their shadows
thumb smudges on the institutional snow hid lawn, and inside the air
was redolent of shit, flowers, and chlorine.
The first time I changed her clothes, peeling back from her shoulders
the blue flecked cotton gown,
then sliding a clean pink one up her arms, we held each other
in the oily light, spent.
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