how well they understood its human position
W. H. Auden, Musee des Beaux Arts
As much as the old masters knew
she knows more
about the solitude of suffering,
the way it encases you like a corset
ivory fingered whale bones pinching
’til the waspwaisted cincture
renders you breathless.
Pale and rail thin
except for the midline coil
of her feeding tube
auburn sweater a smidge darker
than her red hair
part halo, part goldilocks, still
she knows how to make an entrance.
We visit on lawn chairs
talking through labored speech
and a syringe of pain meds
about books and Netflix and current events
until she commands
with the laser focus
of a wild thing
tell me what’s going on with you
and doesn’t break the spell until
the litany has been invoked.
A master of misdirection
sleight of hand
and diversions so smooth
it is only hours later
in the looping playback of my mind
that I mourn my failure
to bend the beam inward
and illuminate the pulse
of her suffering.
[Gyroscope, Winter, 2020—Issue 20-1]
Elise Chadwick 