The Wolves

It was the week of asking. Asking

to watch her eat. Asking if she understood

the doctors’ questions. Asking her

to explain the difference between

wanting to die right now, and dying later.

The tumor making certain answers

unquestionable. I watched her point

to the incense dish from which

someone swept all the ashes up. Asking

if she recognized us. Because that

is what the living want: thinking

it is a sign we have been loved.

But the answer was a summer drive,

a mountain, piles of leaves beneath which

a wolf slept, suckling her cubs.

Some deaths are good

and it makes them hard to grieve.

She was, at times, in great pain. We wanted her

to die, too. That was important. But first

we wanted her to remember.

From the bed, a finger pressed

into a pile of leaves. Gray haunch,

unmovable ashes. I didn’t want to disturb

their tableau, she told us. And drifted off. And

we did not know the meaning behind this.

The wolves must have looked so comfortable

to her: wordless and in this wordlessness

perfect. Did she want to go there, too.

I could point to the image and say, my father

must be in there, my uncle. Or:

the wolf is you, you are still the mother,

as if necessary to name that self

at the end of its world. An animal cry,

memory. That was our selfishness.

As death was hers. She insisted upon it.

And why not. It was good for me

to get a chance to know you,

she said, who had known me

my entire life. Then the pills, a small

handful, crushed into juice.

She was happy then. We all were. Or

said we were. What

is the difference now.