As We Wait

We don’t know how to wait for death—
how to size it up or frame it
or decide what to do with ourselves
as time stretches
and the person we love
is there but fading
at a pace only God can measure.

Those who’ve squeezed into the room
can squeeze your hand while it’s warm
to convey love beyond words and hearing.
Those of us distanced by miles
feel crippled by language
as we crop our grief
into messages and continue
to cry alone.

What is left except to make peace
with the thief of life—
to comfort ourselves with the end
of your pain as we sob for ours?

Next will come the finality of a funeral
with its eulogies in elegant sentences
and whole paragraphs and stories,
but this space of in-between
and not knowing when,
of texted updates hours apart,
of ventilators and heart monitors
and lines of uncertainty,
has the wrenching feel of a poem.

This was all I could do for you
on your deathbed—
you who loves words as I do
and would know what each of these
cost me in tears.