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enjoy this writing from Allison Grayhurst in the free 2015 chapbook: Make the Wind (click on the front cover image or the title text to download the free PDF file)				You can also order this as a 2016 6" x 9" perfect-bound paperback ISBN# book! Click on the book cover spread to order Make the Wind as a book at any time!

Effie

Allison Grayhurst

Picture at the bottom
tied up in a pit of moths.
The royal crown, life without
a wheel to ride. Paving up the stream
where children once charged down an incline
and jumped into its shallow body.
Instead I am weakened, unable to hold
my breath for more than ten seconds,
lungs, tender with each breath, wounded, flaccid,
but airways enflamed, engrossed with harsh swelling.
Will I die this way? Before my children are fully grown?
Will this be the place, alone, afraid, surrounded by love with
no love able to save me, repair my pulse, give current
enough to dismantle the throne of this disease?
I lay on a bed, under sheets. I know what is tomorrow.
I have no choice
but to let go. My children! My husband! My darling loves!
Winter has not yet come – here, but more like spring
crushing my chest, one breath, one breath, heavy liquid
rising in pockets meant for air – one breath, one breath.
The morning has arrived and death is edging nearer.
I see it waiting
for me on my neighbour’s roof, patient, not as a predator,
but more like a sea at ebb tide, gathering moon gravity
and a natural motion of force that will eventually drown
whatever remains on the beachy shores, drowning
before winter - one breath.
My children are on their own as I am and I cannot stop
this freezing, save them from the cliffs
of mountain-burning grief,
prevent them from being orphans in other people’s homes,
holding eye contact briefly with other mothers who love
them, feel for them, but never the way I have loved them.
The world will wax me, carry me across
on the path of my heritage.
No one will be alright. Death is never healed,
it is a garment permanently glued, re-shaping the wearer,
taking the light through a black hole,
ending the peace of ignorance.
One breath. The sky has changed.
It is the last time I will bear it witness, from now on -
hospital ceilings, the insides of my eyes
and dreams of purgatorial pain
overcome, of dreaming my children old
with children of their own.
Don’t stop dancing, I tell them, don’t watch me. I am sorry.
I can barely breathe. Is God real?
I am holding many hands holding mine; whispers,
I love yous, goodbyes.
My last breath escapes me, easier now.
I hear singing, sobbing, singing louder.
I am listening, complete as a stone. My work is over.
My love is burning.
It is a sun. It is the shape of that song.

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