When the ambulance caressed you here
to effigy recumbent under the crisp white sheet
in a clean cold gown far
from your lair’s comfortable grime
and warm clutter, I was not surprised
to find the two of you so tight.
Janine you clutch Karla, as you christened
your pelvic mass—the name you reserved
in your heart for the daughter you never birthed.
Had you arrived before your metastatic marriage
we most assuredly would have separated you two
and washed Karla’s perfume from your thorax with chemo.
In tumbling days left to we three together
your refusal of chemo made sense as a medical decision
but you declined morphine yet welcomed Haldol’s hard blue edge.
At first I was shocked―then as we
titrated your nonlinear musings
in the fang of morning’s breath
deep into the hour of the wolf―I discerned
you two wanted to eclipse through the pinhole as one
unnumbed with ribbons of poppy blossoms streaming
and undistracted by your brain’s feral chipmunk scamper―
you are free to choose as many stars
as you wish to spice your last supper.
I will do no harm.