21
your mouth
Your mouth lay open
in that helpless heat,
bedsheets pulled up to your chin,
your face gray and worn out.
I thought back forty-three years:
we were to be married in August
and were grocery shopping at Safeway
living on Race Street in Denver,
living “in sin” as they said at the time.
An elderly woman stood by the lettuce
display, her mouth agape, her faded
green greatcoat hung like a moan
from her shoulders. An old man,
clearly her husband, approached.
“Can’t you shut your mouth?”
he said loud enough to humiliate her
and embarrass me. So close to our vows
we laughed nervously about this scene,
laughed about it for years. We’d never
wind up like those two rutted beings.
And now, in this dim hospital light,
I watch you gulp desperate air,
this seventeenth surgery,
these two years of pain,
a silent scream between us.
I love your open mouth.
I bend low over you and kiss
your blistered lips, blessed
by your fevered skin.
And we can still laugh about
that old man and his wife
standing by the lettuce display,
her green coat hopelessly scraping
the dirty Denver tile,
because what happened to them
never happened to us.