Cara Dees

Triptych

when my mother coughed black blood
E spread a spring green

dishrag over it so when my mother

looked down in her haze she saw no blood
no black muck but green only

& asked it was green?

her gaze trembling upward to us
& E answered yes yes

it was green my mother asked

no other questions secure in that new
silence gathering in her brain

the body’s expulsion

of spring green just another
strange slice of her dreaming

when she died I thought
oh the bridge inside of me

has snapped & I flung

sad excuses for rope over the chasm
bit by bit I worked to refasten

the halves of the center of me

after choosing the casket my head slipped
from E’s shoulder & I slept

dreamless on her breasts the entire drive

home she woke me only when
we were in sight of my mother’s

irises shredded by dogs & snow

today E is married to a fascist

he listens in on our calls & she
has stopped calling her silence not

altogether unlike the first morning

after my mother’s leaving
when I asked where she was

behind me the window a steep gloss

& E told me we saw her
die the night before & it was all

something like my mother’s widened

silence or a small green mercy hiding
a clearing of blood a bridge suspended

over a nothing everywhere splitting open