for Gaby
Night after night you stay awake
caring for your dying sister—
dipping washcloths into cool
basins of water, a drop or two
of Ativan in her Diet Coke.
I lean into your melody, you ask me
to hold down the harmony.
This is something I can do.
I always thought of death as light
dimming, going out, but your sister
glows, a gentle sun. Her body is
a lantern, lighting a path only
she can see. Our rabbi says
death came to Moses “like a kiss,”
that entering the next world will be
“a silken thread drawn through milk.”
Here. I picked the last apples
growing on the tree outside this window.
Winter apples are the sweetest.
Take this slice into your mouth.
