if

IF I stay awake
if I am loyal enough
clever enough
You will not die

If I ask the best questions
If I praise the nurse
appease the nurse
fire the nurse

If I second-guess the doctor
If I push the doctor
hard outside the protocol
the box the casket

make the doctor notice
who you are
why you are
irreplaceable

IF I am lovable enough
beautiful enough
worth staying for
You will hang on

If I am seductive
selfless reassuring
selfish harsh pleading
Enough

Sound the true note
the right phrase
press avoid pressing
Make you try

If I wind you up
set the hook
yank you will not
Stop

If I say don’t
I won’t I hurt
I can’t
If I keep not saying

not hearing
the story in which
it is time if I say
More

If 43 years is not
enough
If no amount of time
No amount of you

If you can never be
too thin
numb weak too
Gone

My Mother, Framed

It isn’t acid-free. Soaked, pressed,
rolled out fresh, these matte fibers
took the ink. And now they send
the blue gaze, the brown spit curl,
the scarlet riding habit you adored
back. Into the camera, into the eye,
the impulse to record. You finger
the glass, as if to lift the pressure,
like peeling away girdle and corset.
Why bother with remembering, why
grip stories, keeping them straight,
upright? Given the young ones don’t
believe you’re quite alive. Half here,
a doomed hulk, a Galapagos tortoise
kept on deck, soon to be turtle soup.
You could be let overboard, float a bit
and go under. Voices would shush,
hands melt to kelp. You’d get to sink
into softness, graininess, unbind
the surface tension of the photo sheet,
and does it matter whether it was Herb
who kissed you so you felt a flashbulb
pop, flooding the scene with light,
or someone else? It’s enough to have
been kissed, or dream you were.
Pixel by pixel the page lets you go.
Nameless spaces keep on opening.

The Caregiver Steps Outside

A gust shoulders the door, swings me out
to free-for-all: swifts redwings meadowlarks

slide skitter dip, the pond shivers with peepers,
cattail bulbs burst open, stalks strike up,

redbuds thrust lime jade viridian, pines pour
yellow dust upon my head. Bobolinks

jabber, muskrats slip me into mud—I grab
to pile it pull it uphill drag it inside

where you go thin, thinner, a scrap of ice.
And all this living spills out of my arms.

Kristin Camitta Zimet is the author of the poetry collection Take in My Arms the Dark and the co-author of A Tender Time: Quaker Voices on the End of Life. She was the Editor of The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review. Her poems have been published in journals and anthologies in eight countries, hung in art galleries and libraries, and performed at venues ranging from concert hall to arboretum.  She has been a primary caregiver, an EMT, a Reiki practitioner and teacher, and a patient care volunteer at the hospital and for hospice.

Header image: “Hold On” by Kristin Camitta Zimet