Two Sentinels
by Rykki Lynn Olson
There’s
that small epiphany— another,
that I’ll bandage over, desperate to ignore
the minimal but telling sign
of the project’s dying throes,
pacified by nurses’ soothing tones
and hooked to life support a while more.
The life still left in doomsday
body— knows our names
and we are paralyzed on either side,
caressing each a hand within our own.
I’ll pray for a miracle and think
you long, instead, for easier release,
but we both keep the deathbed vigilance,
tongues too numb for trust or shifts—
we just wait and hold and stay,
caretakers of a dying cause,
our self-appointed charge and child,
our love and last connection.