I can’t remember when death
turned moments to memorial,
gifts unfolded to blessings.
The tan slippers of Christmas past
snuggled my mother’s lost toe
so the others never mourned.
Those mules never left her feet,
even on her final nap.
“Bless me Papa,” her last words.
I don’t know if they were lost
or she was buried with them.
I thought they were forever gone.
And then twenty three years on
I gifted my friend some pair
my new wife found on last sale.
She wore them, a sacrament
to follow from home to ward
bequeathed from last breath
thru the fragile bruise of time,
the visions of Christ near her,
repeating deliriums
of cold, cold, cold: hot, hot, hot
and I love you, I love yous
until lost in all the moves
from ICU to hospice,
unable to find others,
a new fleshy blanket I
draped around her cold/hot feet,
until it snuggled just so right,
perfect as a thank you.
Five days after Thanksgiving
she passed away and I took
the cloth home to wash and wear
to find my wife had found it
and regifted what I could
not own to her sleeping soul.
