Faster

My mother is sobbing again
behind her bedroom door,
the phone’s hot battery

against her cheek. Her ex-fiancé
is dying; she still phones him.
She tells me he spends his day dragging

an oxygen tank across the floor.
She sniffles, begins
to blow-dry her hair. Or maybe

it’s my sister, who just switched
on the radio – rock music,
but soft. I would shout

if I thought it might help.
I would submerge the phone in water
if I thought it might take him from her faster.








orignally appeared in Salt Hill