With your dazzling heart split
and crumbling, for a moment
you let me see the sweet agony
of your pain. Your face twists
into a cord and your eyes, your
indestructible eyes, blink a crack
of fear and you break into tears.
(If you think this makes me love
you less, you’re wrong.) You walk
to the kitchen sink and gather
yourself with the pink clusters
of the crepe myrtle at the window.
They tumble into the summer night
like our lives fall into the heady unknown
of your diagnosis. You grip the edge
of the stainless, steady your voice and say
I might not make it, and I move to you
and turn on the water and rinse out a pot.
You smile like our world depends
on clean dishes and we hold our hands
together under the warmth. And later,
when you sleep upstairs and your
breathing is steady and deep, I stand
at the sink alone while the night shifts
back to dawn. The blooms are clotted
a muted red beyond our world
of sky-gray dark and getting darker.
I tell myself I have to practice what it
might feel like. I let the water run cold.
I stand until I can bear it.
Sandy Coomer is a poet, artist, Ironman athlete, and social entrepreneur from Nashville, TN. Her poetry has been published in numerous journals such as Stirring, Linden Avenue Review, Main Street Rag, Sky Island Journal, and Jelly Bucket. She is the author of three poetry chapbooks and a full-length collection, Available Light (Iris Press, 2019). Another full-length collection, The Broken Places, will be published late 2021 (Saddle Road Press). Sandy co-hosts two monthly events, Black Dog Poetry Open Mic and Rockvale Poetry Book Club and is a three-time poetry mentor in the AWP Writer to Writer Mentorship Program. Sandy is the founder and director of Rockvale Writers’ Colony in College Grove, TN. Her favorite word is “believe.”