We sit for hours
next to each other
in MICU, inches
between us, as we’ve
sat for a lifetime
of hours—in the back
of our father’s green Nash,
his bent arm
sticking out the window,
our mother’s cigarette smoke
filling the car,
at dining room tables, yours
at Christmas, mine at Easter,
at premature wakes, our
father’s and mother’s,
your husband’s,
in hospital waiting rooms,
in beach chairs at Lake Naomi,
watching our three daughters swim and fight
over the bright green crocodile float.

Now we sit in Sacramento, California
on a beautiful spring day
in a room where your thirty-nine-year-old
daughter, your youngest,

is dying. Asleep often,
when awake, confused,

but today she opens her eyes
and asks you if you’ve seen
the new Elvis movie yet.

She doesn’t recommend it
and closes her eyes.

We’ve stopped reading,
stopped scrolling, and we just
look at her together, your daughter,
my niece, until you break the silence and say,

with the ferocity of a mother
about to lose her daughter, “I wish
I could just pick her up
and carry her out of here.”

How she surprises us then
by opening her eyes and saying,
“Do it, do it,” and in that moment,
our thighs pressed hard against each other
as if about to stand, I see us
disconnecting her from all of the tubes,
the monitors, her ascites-burdened body
cradled in your strong arms as we move out together
through the open door before us.