ICU

I peel adhesive tape from your eyelids.
There’s the infinite stare in
a room which offers no sense
of health, no comfort as I move close,
your breath never so
bad as when man-made.
Tears fill your eyes
(though they are mine)
quenching their thirst
dried out by the air you can’t blink away.
I blink them for you, manually,
though a broken heart wonders
what manual was written to learn this.
I stick the tape to the bed rails,
and press your hand, though for naught,
like flicking a switch when the power’s out.
I hold you wanting you to hold me
and tell me that it’s not my fault,
but there is only the slow
click-click of your breath,
and the gentle beeping of your heart,
paddle-shaped burns cross your breasts.
I can’t measure the distance
between my skin and you
even though we’re touching.
Tomorrow it shall be my choice
to tell them that you should be
allowed to go home, to let you
become as cold as your hands,
as hard and cold as the fingernails
you’d chew, Mom saying “stop that!”
when we’d watch TV,
children huddled together on the couch.
I huddle here now,
with other screens flashing and buzzing,
and I know that I shall leave here,
without you, no matter what I do.

I’ll tell the nurse about the tape,
and ask her to cover my eyes before I go.

©Bill Gnade 2000, 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

This poem is associated with this essay on death and dying.

The Temperature Of Things

Beneath these delicate, ice-scarred branches
you raise weeping, tearless eyes in doubt
sun-ward where the autumn chill won’t reach.
The band ringing your finger is warmer than his
now that he’s a cold-blooded thing deep
like a turtle in the mud of a December pond.
You know he is in a shell too, the carapace
you bought the other shock-sodden day
when he was a little bit warmer than time allows now.
You think he’s warm there, still, not white like the ashes
fallen from your lip-stained cigarette, once a flame
all but smoked out between trembling fingers.
You exhale over those red, red lips, warm rosy breath,
a bit smoky, which won’t warm his comely cheek
though you think he may be home, waiting,
displaced, returned from an unplanned trip with
bouquets and postcards from heaven-gilt cities.
You’ve not seen this place before, in this light,
slanted shadows, heatless, resting on their backs.
You doubt the cold, the cold which becomes him,
the temperature of mere things: like the flowers,
the wind-tossed robe and the book of prayer,
the dirt tracing your favorite shoes and the
hardly hidden spades leaning against
that leafless tree with lichen-clad trunk.
Turning your searching, sorrowed face away from
those cold insistent shadows lying there far too long
you make your own departure certain,
like the chill-touch of those nearby headstones.

©Bill Gnade 1997, 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

This poem is associated with this essay on death and dying.