Wistful Breath

Could be any day now, waiting for that last breath and a peek, an opening, of glazed orbs once blue. Wanting him to stay forever even though his body laughs at me. Each consuming cell eager for his parts; each consuming cell seeking malice against him. Time rips away as cafeteria food tears apart my stomach. I churn altogether with labored breaths we share – One, two… three, four… neither of us ready. I hunger for a smile from ragged ends of lips, holding a crushed pastry in my hand and looking on the first man I ever loved. Down sterile hallways and up to floor three, past gleaming instruments waiting for purchase, where days ago he inched forward, struggled, bending, working at leaving there – Twists and pulls and penicillin and Jello. “Getting out of here tomorrow.” Yet room 3220 never released him. Eighty-two years, some tattered, some fulfilled, his face before an enchantment of warmth. I kiss him and his cheeks dampen and he cannot hear me because the whispers devour him in such a small room, poised to yank grandfather away from me. I yell, surprising myself, worried about his safekeeping. And they tell me the angels’ surround him. But I fear giving him over to strangers and question everything then, right then, while mourners touch him, all eyes able, all mouths perfunctory motions Of grief and despair that only I should share with only him. And these angels… are they good enough to take his hands turning blue, and his second-hand hearing aids? At three a.m. I cringe at my own suspicions and with the fifth breath I believe in that place, for him, anything (even that) I will believe, for him. His prayers are mine as long as the pain ceases, though my angels are morphine and the twelve-hour shifts of Margaret and Sam and Betty, who have known him three days and call him “sweetheart”.