by Kell Pieper
I
I do not know if you can see the trees from the window. Your glasses are on, and your eyes are often closed. I sit in a leather chair while you sleep, pulling a book from my wide-bottomed purse.
My uniform never fits quite right. I fidget when I stand and sit to loosen what’s tight and to gather what’s loose. Your dog pulls her bed into the library to sleep near you. The cat waits by the backdoor to come in and go out in a steady, urgent whorl.
The machines whirl in the laundry room, in the kitchen. A humming.
I am told you are dying uncommonly fast.
II
You are a tall man. Even now, thin as you’ve become, you are heavy to move. You seem so thirsty. After sucking the water from the small pink sponge, you chew it, chasing the slake of it.
You cannot drink, though last week you could. It happens like that: one day, the water slips into your lungs instead of your stomach.
III
I’ve never held a conversation with you, sir. Your library is full of books I’d like to read. Your wife doesn’t like the author of my book, and that is okay. She is at work; she is very kind; she loves you and I love that, being in a house with a love like yours.
In your kitchen, my coworker expounds on the follies of teaching evolution in school. To her, they are various. She leans on the island. She gestures.
I do not believe in god, which I have never mentioned to you. You’re asleep. Your whisper is hoarse. I hold a silence instead, and I think you hear me.
IV
I cannot move you onto your side properly, not without help. Your wife has to leave more often, now, to settle your affairs. I do the best I can before I am taken off your case. Reassigned.
It is a new thing, for me, to begrudge my body for its strength. I cannot forget it. Each night, after I drove home from your house, I cradled the one weight I own in both hands, arms raising and raising as I sank towards the floor.
The trees from your window: bare from winter, but lovely and long and tall. From the ravine they whisper into the stillness.
V
I did not know you long enough to be invited to your funeral, but the company calls me with the news of your death.
I put both hands on the wall. I lean for a moment and breathe, breathe out.
It is not your religion, and it is no longer mine. But I go to the church and wait for Mass to end, to light a candle for you. My partner is here with me, in the pew. It is Wednesday. I went to school here, in this parish. There’s singing.
We have time. We wait. We examine the windows. The communion line. The statues that flank the altar like boys.
::
Kell Pieper (she/they) is a queer Midwestern poet living somewhere else. Their work can be read at Cold Mountain Review. She writes about the intersections of love, class, health, and power.
Image: Haley Carman
Image description: a brown recliner sofa chair surrounded by full bookshelves next to a white air conditioner.
Psaltery & Lyre 
This is so intimate and raw. Thank you.