Our father knows all five of us
and shows he knows:
A hand, pressed. A nod acknowledging
each daughter here at last
as animals seek shelter in the cold,
as however lost or found we feel
or felt or will, we still seek home—
surviving selves in disembodied shells.
Chronos’s hand sweeps across
the moment kidneys fail. When blood flow
to the heart slows, stops—so
matter-of-fact. This is how we terrify
at symptoms from now on: each one
in light of layered diagnoses,
prismed in the glass, reflecting
on that sterile room,
our interrupted rhythms, who will come.
We listen as the nurse says
hearing is the last to go, and cling to this
as we whisper our testimonies.
