Lullaby

Remember when we lay together

drifting off to sleep,

you always fell asleep first?

You might share a sleepy thought:

as in, “the flower is dancing,” maybe?

Then, holding your hand,

a twitch, a tug, or a startle,

perhaps one more,

and gently you’d melt into dreamland.

Leaving me, eventually, to follow.

Or now, sometimes, to insomnia,

something I couldn't understand then.

Sleep came easily to me, if not instant, like yours.  

A friend might mention

hours awake from 3 to 5 a.m.

What was that about? I’d wonder glibly.

Just sit up and read, or meditate, 

or even masturbate:  carpe noctem.

But now the metastatic cancer, 

this ‘carcinomatous meningitis:’

you’re so very tired, so sleepy all the time.

I sit here holding your hand while

you doze in the hospital bed,

more twitches, more sleepy thoughts.

This love, this life, this loss,

what is this all about?

Sitting here, I meditate – no, I resist: why here, why now?

Don’t leave me and our three boys

to this insomnia, this carcinomatous sadness,

to linger here in this endless moment.

But, if you go, hear me:

we will always love and cherish you,

you charmed and delicate dancing flower.

You will return to God, back into us;

you may wake up, and find, 

that this bit of stardust

that seemed such an

important and unique and beautiful you;

we all felt it, we all still do. 

You may wake from this dream dust,

for breathing you back in God must,

and come back home.

Just as these tears,

falling from these eyes,

will return to the clouds they fell from.