Sucking Love Out of a Straw (for Paul)

I want to touch those lips

that touched the straw

that touched the child’s hands

as he poured,

very purposefully,

love into and out of a paper cup.

I want to touch your lips. I want to feel

if the cracks when you smile have always been there

or if they develop each time you avoid

tears, inevitable tears that

soon will make

that little boy

ask you why

and where did she go—

the reason, of course,

to cry in the first place.

How long have you smiled with cracks in your lips?

How long has it been since you

slept by her side watching her barely

breath, watching her become little in spite of

the size of the tumor in her womb? Where you once dwelled.

Where your child first came from.

Unreasonable guilt holds you

here by her side

all the hours it takes to look closely

at her

form, disfigured, disproportionately small in limb

and large

in heart as she hangs on

and tries

unsuccessfully

to smile. As she hangs on her lips crack

in want of enough love to let go.

                                                And all I do is stand here,

                                                a sentinel to the body’s demise.

                                                I push IV lines, push morphine lines.

                                                I push the bed down, the lights down,

                                                the love down

                                                from my eyes and bleeding heart.

As in the dark,

the darkness now chiseled into

the definition of your face—those lips that

tremble, that mouth that quakes,

your eyes that hold steady and refuse to look away, the tears

that finally fall when your child

is not

looking. Then,

that face you make brave as he enters the room,

looks at early dying and does only what he thinks will do.

His mother’s lips are cracked

from not eating

enough, not drinking enough,

as yours are cracked

from smiling

too much at a growth too big

to ignore, a growth too big to fight anymore.

The child who knew, better than you,

better than me, than her—

we can only do what we can do.

The child, your child, her child

is old enough to know how to

fill a paper cup with love,

hoping this love

can be sucked from a straw, and heal

the cracks we don’t always see.

How to fill a paper cup with love

and place a straw

to the unmoveable body,

to the cracked lips of an unrecognizable

mother, unrecognizable except for the father who smiles

with the same cracks,

the same bleeding cracks

in a heart with the same broken

hope that enough love exists to let go.