Matthew Schmitz

we were all young then, when I was six and
outside the nursing home in a blizzard-wrapped Bangor
stripped naked of you

my face was a faucet in the seventeen below
as my voice mimicked the machine's monotone flatline
of you, nestled inside, cocooned in flannel with
your mouth agape and warmth bled away,

having stepped forth to where no Dante would see you--

past the window I was what you could not be,
pulsing ears echoing my heart pumping sound,
but to the touch I was you, Oma,
cold-cheeked and dead inside

before, when your hand was strong and your horn gave plenty,
you ladled out love in abundance,
keeping the family's stomachs full and our lives
woven tightly together

but I came apart over your body,
one irrigated by tubes that fertilized fallow soil--
my mouth was open,
hungry for a harvest you could no longer provide--

and in your life's final frame,
your hand, road-mapped with veins and terrained with age,
smoothed my face as you gasped out
"es ist fein, mein kind,
everything goes away"

a breath that my lungs could not repay