PRAYER

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  • Burrowing, bulging, it—no, they
  • move against her, within her,
  • gnawing nearer to things
  • she cannot live without—
  • organs, bones, synapses,
  • memories, senses, clarity.
  • .
  • "Pray that it's swift."
  • .
  • I do. I sit beside her,
  • praying to these agents of death,
  • Move quickly. Finish what you've started.
  • There's no going back so
  • don't torment her endlessly, OK?
  • .
  • She'll never again drive us to close doors
  • against her endless questions,
  • her continuous-loop narrations
  • of her every inconsequential thought.
  • .
  • She'll never again startle me with total recall
  • of something I told her when I was fifteen,
  • something she clearly wasn't listening to.
  • .
  • She'll never again amaze us with her innocence
  • and generosity, with her willingness
  • to step beyond the walls she's lived within
  • and accept what to her are anomalies—
  • the nonwhite, the nonChristian, the nonstraight.
  • .
  • She'll never again change the subject to nonsense
  • when I'm trying to tell her something
  • of world-shaking importance.
  • .
  • She'll never again dip a hook into fine thread
  • and count her way to magical snowflakes
  • for far-flung family Christmas trees.
  • .
  • She'll never again know
  • that we are here, beside her.
  • .
  • It may be the morphine,
  • it may be the devourers,
  • it may be the exhaustion of the decades,
  • but she needs to get shut of
  • this besieged and bedeviled body.
  • .
  • Do your job, rampaging cells.
  • Do your job, damn you.