Glass bowl with pink swirls

                   moves a little whirlpool, still,
reminds me of your last, small desires—
to dabble a hand in warm, soapy water,
playing the boundary notes of here
and not here, testing a surface
the beneath of which none of us knew.

To perceive you seeing nothing and everything,
to watch the loop of your hand in its benediction
or to sit at your feet with my hot cheek tilted
to meet the roll and stroke of soft fingers,

was to be most steady and most moved
by your tender infinitive. That keepsake.

Sick Room

The air is too thick in here.
There are too many blankets and pillows
propping you up, wedging your legs.
‘I may be here tomorrow,’ you say.

It makes me think of all the little waxeyes
I tried to save from cats when I was a girl,
how I’d place them in warm shoeboxes overnight,
only for them to die by morning,
shocked by a surfeit of comfort.

Lines overheard at the teaching hospital

I learned today
that heartstrings
are called
chordae tendineae.

I saw them.
In fact,
I got to cut them
in half.