Nourish
My mother’s nipple
from where I once fed
pokes through her hospital gown
as though it is one of the snaps.
I’m not sure I should touch
her breast, rearrange her,
as so much of her body hurts
and she’s at last floating
on morphine. Her nipple
once nourished me
but now nothing can nourish her
as she refuses all food.
I’m feeling useless, wanting
to preserve my mother’s
dignity, when a nurse
with a solution so obvious,
so simple, pulls up the bedsheet.
* * * * *
Old Lady Smell
My mother made me promise
to tell her if she ever started to smell
like an old lady. My fastidious mother —
who dusted every Saturday
who never left a dish in the sink overnight
who loved taking showers
(no matter how dangerous they’d become)
who always lifted the lid of her Tupperware
and sniffed her leftovers before eating
who always ran the kitchen fan when she cooked
who always ran the bathroom fan when she pooped
who put a chicken carcass in the freezer
until the day of trash pickup since she didn’t want
even her garbage to reek — made me pinky swear.
I kept waiting for a human, sour stink
in her house, in the nursing home,
in the hospital, in hospice, on her body
but such a smell never came.
It was as though my mother was a saint,
like Little Rose of Woonsocket —
who died a few months before my mother was born
who performed miracles
who wore the stigmata
who cured the ailments of others
who had crippling arthritis like my mother
who, unlike my mother, died young
whose followers had her grave dug up
to see if she could be canonized by the Catholic Church
whose body hadn’t decomposed
whose coffin emanated the scent of roses.
* * * * *
January 6, 2022
A year later I remember my mom in the nursing home
without her phone. My niece had taken her new clamshell with 4G
to reboot overnight. We hoped this meant her calls would no longer drop.
My niece wanted to save all her grandmother’s contacts
for the next seven months of her life. There was no way to know
that my mother’s time would be cut that short. I’d bought her
a yearlong plan of unlimited TracFone minutes. My mother
had survived Covid — so many in her nursing home gone, buried
because of it. So many, in fact, that they are now raising money
for a Remembrance Garden on the grounds. Of course, Covid
isn’t over. And the insurrection continues. A year ago
it seemed unthinkable — camouflage and Confederate flags,
a guillotine, smashed windows, and grown men pooping
on the capitol floor. My niece dropped off my mother’s new phone
at reception on January 7, 2021 as there were still no visitors allowed.
By the time I spoke to my mother she had calmed down
but said the whole nursing home was upset, the Alzheimer’s
patients crying and nurses texting their kids. What if those guys
were able to climb up to the fourth floor? My mother’s legs
wobbled, even with a walker. I know, mom, I said, I know.
She asked, What if I had no way to call you to say goodbye?
I should have dialed the nurse’s station January 6. Should have
insisted I needed to speak to my mother no matter how busy
the staff was. We used to joke about my mother’s
burner — the only phone she could dial with her arthritis —
how she was untraceable like the bad guys in The Wire
or Breaking Bad. Today I wonder about the contacts
on each rotten senator’s phone. Each rotten representative
in on the lie. I wonder what they tell their mothers
a year later. That is, if their mothers are still alive.