I lie in corpse pose, tracing my breath from belly upward,
The rise and sinking of life’s fill while my mother dies in
The next room, eroded to the bone, life struggling to breathe.
The disassociation drifts from front room to back, cold to warm.
The back room, where my mother lies, nearly inert, heats up
The temperature rising with the sun and falling just so too,
While the front room, where I lie as faux corpse, posing, is
Cold as the window faces the backyard, which stays sunless.
Her blood runs colder now, though she always felt the chill of
An early morning, her time, or after dusk, when she’d wish us
To bed, free her to herself, what mothers do as children sleep.
Now, the cold doesn’t penetrate, her defenses gone with decay
Just as I gain the weight I never had, she always had, in our
Twisted turn of events that find her at the head, me at the back,
She never behind, always the leader, me the child, now the mom,
Oh, it’s all wrong as a matter of right, bad timing for an ending.
In the gaze of the other 