Katie ©
This is an old memory from me.
I was just a young lad helping an auld jute-mill worker come to the end of her days.
Graham Donachie
Victoria, Canada
2003
here,
in the lost gloom
in the moulding
stench of a midnight
room,
sounding the
rattle and terror
of death’s
last throaty battle.
she
lies, transfixed
wheezing croaking
pleading
but he not heeding her
sprawls useless,
across the couch
drunk in the stink
of his own decay.
as if
life were still young
she suddenly smiles
upon the face of her
beau,
but he snores on
oblivious to the final
chapter of her
journey.
she
lies in the ashes
of her life
and I.. the neighbour
light
her last gasp
her last smoke,
she holds my hand in a papery grasp
relishing the need
and
coughs upon the
enjoyment of it
in her cot 'mongst the
dying
embers of a weak flame fire
and eases gently
my hand from hers
for she is no longer here.
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