Precantation
The List is like a pregnancy, albeit longer-lasting:
the purpose isn't readiness but readiness results.
When my father started waiting
new lungs were conceptual, a choice he'd make
someday, thoughtfully, with trepidation.
They were rejectable, not the body's failure to accept,
the mind's.
One holds the choice at bay
until one starts to crave it. The body craves it.
Those disembodied lungs, B positive,
another tower of a person has to cease to be alive—
you don't wish for that.
You wish
for someone's wife or mom or brother to agree
donation is a good idea. I can see them, gathered
beside a beloved tower of a spouse or sibling,
not wanting to take leave,
not wanting the day to be this day.
They have to choose donation
while the person's still
alive, the breadth of that chasm
between being told
the person's over
and being able
to relinquish him.
I imagine it: my baby looking asleep,
my husband, looking like he's sleeping. He's a smoker,
I would have to say, but he has beautiful skin.
A gift. You try to think of whom you save,
but you also think of violence, violation,
remonstrance. What should be whole
and can't be whole.
My father leans against the mantel, winded, will he fall?
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