Gifts

I can’t remember when death

turned moments to memorial,

gifts unfolded to blessings.

 

The tan slippers of Christmas past

snuggled my mother’s lost toe

so the others never mourned.

 

Those mules never left her feet,

even on her final nap.

“Bless me Papa,” her last words.

 

I don’t know if they were lost

or she was buried with them.

I thought they were forever gone.

 

And then twenty three years on

I gifted my friend some pair

my new wife found on last sale.

 

She wore them, a sacrament

to  follow from home to ward

bequeathed from last breath

 

thru the fragile bruise of time,

the visions of Christ near her,

repeating deliriums

 

of cold, cold, cold: hot, hot, hot

and I love you, I love yous

until lost in all the moves

 

from ICU to hospice,

unable to find others,

a new fleshy blanket I

 

draped around her cold/hot feet,

until it snuggled just so right,

perfect as a thank you.

 

Five days after Thanksgiving

she passed away and I took

the cloth home to wash and wear

 

to find my wife had found it

and regifted what I could

not own to her sleeping soul.