You died. No Greek chorus, no low-hanging acacia,
only a daughter in the grip, an inhibited husband You ruled,
death a clot; I remember listening to love as it warps and distorts.
You rode a mechanized throne, wrested from the insurance company,
hitting the doorstop with your wheels. And spun 360 degrees —
an obese top. You were just a crash, a muted roar.
I saw power: the flower-print dress, dysarthric speech, ruined claw —
all a fiat, and I, meeting what was wrong.
I do not want you back; the terrible suffering, meted out,
and the grand spell an attack of the oddest hue,
crimson and blue, what washes away
in profile. No more nonsense of I can help you.
On your chair, zigzagging to the examining room,
berating those near, on the wall nothing
you’d look at, the elegy of a snort, so fragile, so wisp-short.
Foreknowledge always right in the end,
looking back and forward, turning on.
Footnotes
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Previously published at www.cmaj.ca