so she sings as she cooks a breakfast
of bacon, toast, & eggs—
Visiting in the summertime,
my love & I strip
& wash the guestroom bedding, hang to dry
Something inside my mother is always ticking
When my father doesn’t eat, her throat hitches
The yolks sunny our plates
My mother watches my father thin
like a comet’s tail,
has nightmares
about the soft love earth makes
to a casket
I am writing myself
into the mother of this poem
On the line, the sheets billow like lungs.