To My Mother, On Her Deathbed

a/n: This is a poem I wrote to my mother while I was quite literally sitting beside her as she lived - and mainly slept- out her last days. Maybe it's not in the traditional sense, but I believe it's the best poem of comfort I've ever written. To me, it evokes both the comfort I hoped to impart to her to let her know it was okay to leave us, and the comfort her memory still brings to me in small, everyday things. I hope that anyone who's ever lost someone important to them can enjoy it, and relate.

.

To My Mother, On Her Deathbed

.

everything is okay.

.

there is an empty house next door

where you can move when you leave.

I hear it’s endlessly big,

but I’ve never been there myself.

.

tell me about it.

.

behind where the curtains are parted

there are green fields, a stone wall beyond which

.

is everything.

.

there are crinkled leaves carpeting the ground

so soft

you could pull them apart with your

hands.

.

lie there long enough

and you won’t need to lie anywhere else

again.

.

think of the last lullaby your mother ever

sang you,

the first time you heard crows early in the

morning and felt electric

with life.

.

the first time you bled.

the first time someone kissed it and made it

okay.

.

think of unnaturally warm rain

coating your face, pattering

at the windows,

the fire-red branches of autumn,

the puddles after the last flood,

the warmth of the right words at exactly the right

time.

.

think of all this and more and it still

will not encapsulate what

I think of when I think

of you.

.

when your sleep soothes you down into the

place of that one questionless

answer,

all of this will be your name

and I will breathe it

as long as

I can.