The Spread - G.N.
She's slim, wearing silk pajamas, weak, purposeful,
folding paper towels into precise fourthsand setting them on the side of the sink.
With the economy of the dying she weighs
the need for each word against its cost to her reserve.
She doesn't want me to see this.
She doesn't want her daughter to see this.
She needs my help.
Peeling back the gauze she says
This is the spread
and for the first time I see cancer.
Some of it has crawled outside of her
and grows there - a mountainous landscape
the diameter of a dinner plate,
red, yellow, raw, oozing, wrong.
Some of it is tenting up the perfect brown skin nearby.
We work together until it is clean and covered.
I pray to see the beauty beyond the horror.
My prayers are answered until I drive away.
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