Julia wants to die in the hot tub
but the fool doctor says no,
too dangerous.
It’s her time. Blood-bag sky,
full moon aching like a cervix.
I boil hot-tub water. Turn on the pulsating
jets, light a patchouli circle of candles.
I dress Julia in her black
silk pajamas, detach
the morphine pump from her stuttering pulse.
She is all skin and eaten-out bone,
weightless in my arms as a sac of flute-song.
I sit on the edge of the tub,
bearded legs opening like a woman’s,
and ease my Julia into water.
Her black pajamas blacken.
Julia cannot swallow
but she holds a wine glass,
the cold stem remembered
pleasure in her hand.
Her skull hairs wisp like cilia toward the jets.
I hold her
long after the last pulse comes.
Wine spills, a red cord
trailing from her goblet.
I turn off the jets. The water spikes
and ripples, spikes and ripples, spikes
and flat-lines.
This poem placed first in the 2009 Wild Violet Poetry Contest.
About Ellen LaFleche
