At day’s end, I tucked her snug
Cocooned against late autumn’s night,
Coaxed her gently to bed’s center
So she would not fall.
Bright beauty’s face,
For disease in ruins,
I cradled in both hands,
My mouth lip-touch to hers.
I kissed her like it was our last.
Loving her was all there was,
All that ever mattered.
So tonight, as every night,
Our one more last night Catechism.
Big words had broken faith with her
(Brain cancer’s corrupt harvest),
Small ones still her friends.
Are you warm? her I’d ask. Yes, I am, she’d say.
Are you cozy? her I’d ask. Yes, I am, she’d say.
Are you safe? her I’d ask. Yes, I am, she’d say.
Do you love me? her I’d ask. Yes, I do, she’d say.
Do I love you? her I’d ask. Yes, you do, she’d say.
My heart in tatters, holding her,
She, so far away,
Looking to me from sad torment
To save her from calamity.
But all was lost, just not lost yet.
We still had now and here.
No luckier man was there than I,
She in my arms tonight,
Even as she slipped from me
Into gone forever.
At day’s end I tucked her snug
Kissed her like it was our last.
I implored indifferent Fate,
When she fell asleep,
That dawn’s sun shine bright in her eyes
That with me she stay one more day
That we be granted the small sanctity
Of one more last night Catechism.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 27, Issue 4.
Thomas Phalen has been writing prose and poetry with varying degrees of seriousness and consistency for over 50 years. Some of his poems and stories have been published in The Lune, Blue Mountain Review, The Muleskinner Journal, Icarus, and The Wild Umbrella. He was a four time contributor in poetry at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, in Middlebury, VT, and in Erice, Sicily. He is one of the Editors of the literary review, The Muleskinner Journal, whose members are a group of fellows who fell in together at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in 2018.
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