Mercy
       

You spoke nonsense in your fever: my mother

would hate me for this. You smoked cigarettes in a backless

gown and waved traffic on, hopeful a hit-and-run would tear

from your young body the catheter that drew from you

a cloud pink with poisoned blood. In your medicated confusion,

another patient stared at the horizon of your forehead

and crossed herself. Her saints were not your saints. If your

mother had known, I think she would have joined hands

with that woman and prayed right there on the sidewalk,

loving you through your cursing and delirium. But no one

had called to tell her that, in another hour, your arm would

be amputated in a room adorned with wide, Modigliani eyes.

And when you told the doctors you didn't think that would

be necessary, the eyes closed and imagined a time when people

were given sainthood, back when the line from your finger

to your heart might have led straight to God.

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Copyright © 2018 Melissa Cundieff All rights reserved
from Darling Nova
Autumn House Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission