Sharp Ice

Your hair was the color of pearls,
but I didn't think they were real.
I couldn't admit to the ash
of your skin, its porcelain pose
on saucers of graves.
Two long days beside your bed. 
A cradle I pushed but could not rock.
My eyes were grabbing renaissance.
I knew it but I acted blind.

You warned me of death and its salt --
how oceans are garnished with thirst.
You taught me how to rope and rise
a baby grand from dining rooms
of buried ships -- and still I 
painted ivory keys of fingernails
neon shades of busy lies
with no respect for waning light.
A wish was stepping on my hands.

Too young to abide the wrinkling fruit,
I wasn't prepared for the rind.
"Consider a storm the polish of craft,
expect the ice to be sharp" -- you said,
but I sat deaf ten miles away.
I should have been there,
when the clock of your heartbeat stopped --
darning a prayer for the size of the hole,
as lungs collapsed like old cocoons.

© Janet I. Buck

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