Thank you for calling. Thursday
I’ll learn what I’ve got.
Waiting is syrup in winter, you said
waiting is a snowstorm in May, wet
and so heavy the limbs with their leaves can’t bear it.
I needed your call to push me out of the bed,
into the last of the colors,
into the gold in the streets.
I’d rather tell you about the stains on the ceiling,
the cracks in the plaster, the reruns on the tube.
You asked me about my bowels and I hesitated, I didn’t want
to announce improvement.
I wanted you down here, on the bottom rung of every ladder with me,
like when we were kids.
I tell you I’ve had the MRI and CT, you ask “So how was that for you?”
And when I can’t say “dreadful” you’re quiet with me ‘til I swallow my sob
and close the crack in my voice. Then there was your question,
“Who’ll come with me to the next appointment?”
I love you for that, for reminding me I have friends.
The doctor’s words have painted themselves across every surface,
I can’t lock the door, I can’t tell you what I’ve been doing,
but it’s good you ask, you with your career, grandkids, husband, and
savings account, while I wonder if the food stamps will last out the month.
I want you to be our mother, or my fireman, or the safety net 20 stories down
I want this out of my body, this burglar with no eyes.

Forty-eight hours ago she was shoving
quarters in the slot machine at Lucky’s
sucking on a cigarette, Beth and Charlie
safe in high school, the laundry
still in the washer, the sink
full from breakfast
her shift at Wendy’s not till three.
She was hoping for the big one
and it came.

His scalpel starts with a cross-cut to chest
slicing through cold, tight tissue that smells of meat
and blood and sweat. Things feel clinical and casual,
the microphone light glows green, clipped
to the grey rubber apron—
his plastic shield, gloves, and booties encase his running
reverent report.

Forty-seven hours and fifteen minutes ago I’d led the code—
her bulging body beneath my locked wrists,
my rhythmic one and two and three and
passionate for one so young.

Creamy white lines her vessels like icing
her heart a stippled, marbled construction—
creamy white in her liver, creamy white in her lungs.
The coroner in his grey plaid suit, toothpick between his teeth, hair
slicked to the left with Brill-cream
says he “ thought so” and shrugs
both of us
wear aprons, too.

The pathologist has placed the heart on his table
He’d found the infarct, the ribs we busted
asks me to adjust the lights, I’m above her
looking into the cavity of her life
wishing we could stop invading
her privacy, wishing
to apologize for wanting to know, like sins
creamy white in the pelvis
creamy white in the brain.

I’m helping hose down the table
but I can’t get clean.