My mother’s big toe has turned black.
An intern with kind eyes whispers to me
outside her hospital room: “Sepsis will probably get her
first.” My feet sink into the floor
as he confides: “She might lose the toe.”
“When they give you a bath here,
they put their hand right in your vagina!” my mother says.
I reply: “That’s good, Mom. They save you the trouble.”
I don’t tell her what I know and she doesn’t ask.
I’m complicit.
It’s what we’ve always done,
like driving to the mall and trying on dresses
the night my father left.
Tonight, I’ve brought gummy bears.
My mother gobbles them from my fingers.
I toss a few into her open mouth
as an animal tamer might, an attempt
to make her laugh.
The nurses and doctors buzz around us, oblivious.
“I don’t care if I die tomorrow,”
my mother exhales.
Well, I care. I’m not ready.
The room becomes morgue-cold and my breath
fogs the screen of the monitor she’s married to.
I lean over, kiss her sticky, candied cheek.
Jennifer Poteet lives in Montclair, NJ, and works in Manhattan as a fundraiser for public television. Her poems have appeared in The Cortland Review, Pedestal Magazine, Clementine Unbound, Naugatuck Review, and several others. Her first chapbook, “Sleepwalking Home,” was published in 2017 by Dancing Girl Press.