Sickroom

I try to carry the gravestone from the darkness of my mother's sickroom— scratches of light around drawn shades— outside, the gold and red of autumn. She is like a queen in exile scraping with her nails on silk walls her message of anger, her weak insatiable demands and regrets. I want her to grow rosy old like a maple leaf, ripening, yielding only to that ice edged wind that must come and cut her down—like me, like everyone.