On more than one night I lowered my mother’s rented bed

so it would be level with my futon bed in a room

of my little sister’s house, where my sister and brother-in-law

had made a hospice out of what had been an office.

I laid my head on the place between my mother’s still-warm

arm and chest, closed my eyes, and cried,

and because it was just her and me, I sucked my thumb

in that way children do, where they wrap their pointer finger

over the bridge of their nose. What I saw was a yellow kitchen,

two brown bags of groceries, and a woman

putting the groceries away. No empty cave where a body

had been, no stinging light from Heaven. No group of women

attending the scene. Just cans of soup, pasta sauce, orange juice.