Denouement
       

There could be worse things than to die in your sleep or in a haze of morphine. Outside woods growing in a deep ravine: aspen chestnut buckeye poison ivy oak. The air system shushes the summer noise of the nearby turnpike. Cold. The house of death.

The last time you were rational you shook my hand and stared at me as if we just met. I am the stranger who married the daughter who hid ganja in her knitting bag. Our children's photos are turned frame down on the basketball mute television. You seem to approve of, instead, the litter of grandchildren from the lawyer son who's just flown in from North Carolina. Their pictures are upright and can see you

as you sleep long now, curled like an infant, your hair downy, your breath gentle into whatever noise snows over your blanketed body. Under the lamp, your wife knits for the glow and waits, and your children sit in your room and speak softly to the afternoon.

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Copyright © 2021 Rustin Larson All rights reserved
from Lost Letters and Windfalls
Blue Light Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission