“What the Shell Says,” oil on canvas, by Eastman Johnson, 1875.
When my coworker blames his anger
on “personal issues,” which is to say,
family trauma triggered by a loved one’s
death, I want to tell him about you.
I want to tell him how much weight you lost
as your kidneys shut down, how their refusal
to filter toxins filled your body with poison—
a paradoxical bloat, as ninety pounds
ballooned until the bracelet I gave you
for luck was too tight, how the nurse cut it off
your wrist to save what circulation was left.
Instead, I listen to his feeble apology,
as if pain justifies bad behavior,
and accept his “I’m sorry” the same way
I’ve come to accept your prognosis,
the same way I’ve accepted all the unjust,
unspeakable sorrows of this world.
Which is to say, I’ve not accepted anything.
I merely watch it happen—and let it.
What can any of us do, but this?
I remember the last time you stood
with me in the garden, when I talked about
uprooting the mother-in-law’s tongue
because it was choking the liriope
we’d planted. You stood over the purple pot
of devil’s backbone, carefully cutting
dry stems that had lost their leaves.
Which is to say, you did the hard work
that I was too scared to do. It’s okay,
you said, don’t worry. This tells the plant
to stop trying to save what is already gone.
Now it knows to send the water somewhere
it won’t be wasted. I see you standing there
with your shears and decide I won’t mention
you to my coworker. Nor will I show him
the final picture, the one of you in a wheelchair
flanked between son and grandson, softly
smiling, so as not to tear your paper-thin skin,
which is to say, skin too tightly stretched,
cheeks mottled and already dark with death.
Marissa Glover lives and writes in Florida, where she’s usually sweating and swatting bugs. Her poetry collections Let Go of the Hands You Hold (2021) and Box Office Gospel (2023) were published by Mercer University Press. You can follow Marissa on social media at @_MarissaGlover_
