She turns from the boy.
Faces a wall. The boy, sixteen years maybe.
“All-feet-and-elbows” skinny.
I look down at the catheter in my arm
and judder. Then look back around.
She does not seem bothered by location or position.
His or hers. Almost smiles:
no, does smile. I think.
She’s large, strong.
She may need to be. And I start
to think—
and I hope this doesn’t sound cruel—
that she tells him—remember,
they are turned from each other—tells him
by way of my silence, calm and frantic. And calm, calm:
“All I have to give you is all I have to give.
What you have you will do with. And I.”
Said by way only of her silence too.
Somewhere in despair? Connecting?
May be love, or have been.
We are sitting apart,
they on a narrow couch,
I alone in a single chair angled toward it.
We are waiting in a cardiac clinic
for our appointed stress tests to begin and end.
Clearly, the boy is the patient, not she. One of us.
Looks tired, very, when he looks up.
Jolts up. A shiver? Spasm? What she gives,
she gives in a wan smile he cannot see. Nor
can I testify to it. Something? Something I might share.
*
Yesterday morning, out back
under the mesquite tree, a clump of cacti,
“Easter Lily” cacti, sprouted
fifty-seven lily-white grails of blossom. So frail
for such potent quickening.
In their nature inherent they have all
collapsed now in the heat
of the afternoon desert sun.
In pollinating,
they gave all they had to give.
Do we ever have more than the single day?
The day blooms white and warm.
Pollinates.
We turn our backs
on the radiant threat of sun-down.
