That last year, having gotten what you wanted,
You smiled more.
Impotent fingers, knuckles like round stones on an abacus
Merely counted the days.
You no longer held out embraced greeting a little too long,
No longer let your fingers dip below the small of my back.
You never pinched the web between your left thumb and finger with your right,
Never said, voice thick with mucus and portent
Right here. I’m numb right here.
What refused anesthesia hurt enough to make insensitivity welcome.
We could have learned from you.

That last year, the rot that rooted in your testicles
Took hold of your bones, shook you hard enough to loosen teeth.
You no longer called life pointless,
But held fast to your claim of how much better mussels tasted
When you pulled them from the sea yourself.

That last year, you stopped telling us we hadn’t invented fun,
Stopped talking, finally, about running to the Charlestown breachway,
Stripping naked and swimming to the other side.
You had no more use for nakedness.
Your desire to reach the other side had paled with your tan from sixty-five summers ago,
Had grown flaccid and weak as you, turned slate grey
To match your sepulchral suit. There are rumors that during

That last year, you wound your fingers tight
around my father’s hands and whispered love.
You never spoke love to me, only sex
Or disapproval or the unsettling combination.
To me, it sounds like a fable,
A desperate invention, the weight of a finger
To pitch the scales from relief past ambivalence to mourning.
Perhaps it was a simply final cruelty
To take the son least likely to grieve
And give him reason.