the smell of you

I held your hand—delicate and cold diseased reality—calling me your cousin

flickering fluorescents; baby blues blinking

clawing at chords stuck in your arm

I want to remember your sugary perfume gripping onto my clothing after our embrace

days later, that scent on the green velvet couch lingering

where you sat telling me about being a farm-girl

with the cornfields and the Mennonites making cheese in their basements

Columbus in the ‘40s—smoking outside of class (because everyone did)

Lima in the ‘60s—with the riots, with the rage, with the risk

I want to remember your forceful independence; marrying someone you met while teaching in Japan

Later divorcing him, to the shock of all

I want to remember summers with you:

Hours of gin rummy and the puckering-shock of Sunkist

The joy of mutual books—

devouring 1984 in at night, warm-light leaking

onto those musty-yellowed pages in your bedroom with your beautiful jewelry and then

the morning sounds of you clanking around and

That smell, the smell of you

Not the reek of shit

Not the shaking to get to the bathroom

Not the time I held your hand to make it

I saw the sagging skin on your thighs for the first time

You wore nothing but a diaper

Shielding you in that hallway

From company’s eyes

I want to cradle your quivering body, covering your panic, hiding your pain

Hiding you

Protecting your dignity

I want to keep you

And how you left

After the subzero temperatures and snowstorms every weekend

You left when the robins came back

An absurd number of them

A thousand of them

All screeching, all chirping next to the care facility’s sloshy pond

In that honey-glow afternoon

While winter left with an unexpected song

During that cyclic hope

You let go