Joanne Limburg
Deuteronomy
After she had buried her daughter,
she set out for the closing chapter,
a two-week ascent
through the floors of the Royal Free;
she took the lower slopes easily,
moving with slow but definite steps
past the lamps, the trolleys and bedside stands
and on into the upper reaches,
the paler, sickly altitudes
inhabited by light sleepers, rattly breathers,
where words are swallowed up
by the nebulising storms
and thoughts themselves disintegrate
for lack of pressure;
at the last nightfall
she drew the clouds around herself,
leaving the nurses to chart her progress
as a dwindling figure on the pulse oxymeter,
until the hour came
for her to pass through zero,
handing her granddaughters
her wedding band, her empty skin,
stretched like tissue-paper over steel
and her dignity, a family treasure
that cut its shape into our shoulders,
every gem a stone imperative.
Page(s) 49-50
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