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.