Last Day with My Father’s Wife

 When I stroked her head, down into her neck,she held quite still, as if feral, and I realizedI had not touched her much, except forhugging her,and maybe she hadn’t been touched muchin the 102 years of her life,except in her first marriage, or whenmy father had been with her. He had appeared to herwith the same dark, brown eyes,and the same first name as her young husbandwho had gone the way of their firstborn who had hardlybreathed, yet, the air of the earth.Today she had cast almost everything off—even her upper teeth, like a wing pickedclean of gristle—white incisors,canines, primaries, secondaries,intact, a pinion removed from her mouth.I hadn’t known that she still had small brownboulders set into her lower jawbone, likestones in a field worked by a tenant farmer,as if her life had not belonged to her,but was something chosen for her by others,a labor performed, not without joy,unpaid, and now she was laying downequipment and skills. Most of the dayI held her hand, which was holding its thumb,and I sang to her, and when I sang,a look of wonder would come over her headand face, as if who ever heardof such a thing,and then, as the day wore on, she would sleep, and I’dread, and my head would sink, and suddenly I’djerk awake to the sight of the long-limbedgolden wrecked dragonflyon the hospice bed. And I’d sing, again,