The Wolves

It was the week of asking. Asking to watch her eat. Asking if she understood the doctors’ questions. Asking her to explain the difference between wanting to die right now, and dying later. The tumor making certain answers unquestionable. I watched her point to the incense dish from which someone swept all the ashes up. Asking if she recognized us. Because that is what the living want: thinking it is a sign we have been loved. But the answer was a summer drive, a mountain, piles of leaves beneath which a wolf slept, suckling her cubs. Some deaths are good and it makes them hard to grieve. She was, at times, in great pain. We wanted her to die, too. That was important. But first we wanted her to remember. From the bed, a finger pressed into a pile of leaves. Gray haunch, unmovable ashes.I didn’t want to disturb their tableau