I'd Rather Fight
David Nash
I remember the room as a series of pictures
her sister, the CEO, emailed
from the hospice
where she performed due diligence.
I wish I could’ve been
there. It’s decor signaled spring
in a region habitually late to green seasons.
Mauve, fuchsia, sea foam, teal
flowing stems, flower blooms
comforting furniture
obscured that It was a room for
the dying,
the dead,
the families saying goodbye.
My mother’s final resting place.
I didn’t know then that
her body would be wheeled out
of that room in seven days.
I came on the sixth
with a liverwurst sandwich,
her favorite.
She was there, but she wasn’t -
my lifelong interlocutor
had departed
leaving me with my silent argument.
I ate her sandwich
in my kitchen at midnight.
A hundred miles away
they pronounced her
dead in that room
I remember like a picture.
David Nash
I remember the room as a series of pictures
her sister, the CEO, emailed
from the hospice
where she performed due diligence.
I wish I could’ve been
there. It’s decor signaled spring
in a region habitually late to green seasons.
Mauve, fuchsia, sea foam, teal
flowing stems, flower blooms
comforting furniture
obscured that It was a room for
the dying,
the dead,
the families saying goodbye.
My mother’s final resting place.
I didn’t know then that
her body would be wheeled out
of that room in seven days.
I came on the sixth
with a liverwurst sandwich,
her favorite.
She was there, but she wasn’t -
my lifelong interlocutor
had departed
leaving me with my silent argument.
I ate her sandwich
in my kitchen at midnight.
A hundred miles away
they pronounced her
dead in that room
I remember like a picture.