We crawled into the white bed,
white room,
white head, white breath.
We crawled inside the rasping machines
and morphine dreams
to hold her cold feet.
My cousin’s belly, round with Sophie inside,
met the odd swollen edges
of our cancerous grandmother,
met the slim sideways edges that are mine.

Calm, once we are on her ark at last,
calm to her nervous righteous polylingual past
fluttering in the milk of her eyes,
calm to her memory sea.
At the end she saw suddenly:
our aunt’s adultery,
our hidden dreams.
She named them one by one with no energy to judge
and would not say goodbye
but gripped my hands painfully
then sent me stumbling to the sunlit door.