Bead 2 (Unblinking Eyes)

Niece,
I remember when they cut your mother 
and pulled your sister out, then you, 
and how you cried and cried.
You never wanted to be here. 
Right from the start.

I open Mama’s old prayer book 
but the words billow like rain.
I wish you had loved
one thing enough to make you 
want to stay; the orange sunsets, 
your drooling dog, the fig tree
in the backyard, your twin sister’s mole, 
Cheerios in cold milk.

Washing your body now,
twenty-four years of bones and flesh 
laid out tall and stiff on this hard table, 
is the cruelest task.

I stand here full of heartbeat.
Touching you is like dipping hands in a cold sea.

I soak a porous sponge in water scented 
with rose, brush it against your neck, 
along your arms, those long, thin legs. 
There is a tampon still inside, the string 
hanging out like the detonator of a bomb.

Darkness bends over itself to devour 
what it will not hold—
the boy you loved watched you cry, 
take a handful of pills,
                                    and said nothing.