
All Fall Down
art by Megan Perkins
You say your disease speaks to you
in low tones, spilling through palm fronds
and spinning you down again. You tell me
not to blame myself.
When we were small you would plead
mama mama rosie holding out your hands
so we could dance around the living room
naked, soft, and feeling so much like ourselves
we didn’t know there was any other way.
When your heart stopped
I was forty-three hours away by car
and the nurses were screaming at you
to stay with them. I could hear you singing mama
mama rosie, your little flat feet turning,
touching down on the green carpet, papa
papa posie, ashes
ashes —
You called me this morning
to describe what it was like to die,
like your hands were under my body, teaching me
to float. Like something was lifting out of you.
This might not be the last time, we both know
how fast things change. How it seems
our home was lifted into the sky sometimes
and flipped on its head, so we’d all fall
down, tip back into nothing.
I think of your bright face, moonshine
through the purple, gauzy curtains
of your childhood room, where evenings
we would spin and fall, spin
and fall. And the clean, milky body
that held you, kept getting up.
Over and over. Kept reaching
for my hands.
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