By Jacqueline Coleman-Fried
I expect he’ll come home
from the hospital—thin,
but still barrel-chested.
I’ll nurse him.
Buy boxes of Ensure.
Paper underwear.
Put out blue towels, flower
sheets on our queen bed.
Tisch, 17 West,
Room 15—
There are two stiff mattresses
close enough to kiss.
And through a large, clear window—
the black, black night.
Under a head light, I see
my husband’s lips
quiver when he snores.
Step close enough
to stroke his forehead, his neck.
To whisper words.
Will he hear?
This sterile hospital room
is our bedroom, where shared
sleep and darkness
are intimate as sex.
Morning. Still breathing.
I take the train home.
A hushed phone call
before sun the next day.
He’s hard as marble, soon
to be ash.
I wash the floral sheets, return
the blue towels to the closet.
Weeks later, I etch the night—
to fix it, to hold it.
Jacqueline Coleman-Fried is a poet who lives in Tuckahoe, New York. Her work has appeared in The Orchards Poetry Journal, Nixes Mate, Streetlight Magazine, New Verse News and Consequence.