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At thirty-two years, out of luck
in her tract house, on a cul-de-sac,
tucked in rumpled sheets,
with cancer. Her pain spoiled three
months of summer. Her eyes, hollow
on yellow skin, fixed on peeling
wallpaper, gaze past me and her
toddlers who clutch at her, at my hem.
Their eyes ask, arms plead. She's past
them, now, I think. I tell her to tell
them, while there's time.
She screws up her mouth
at me, points me out the door
What can I possibly say?
Her children race to that outstretched
arm and she bends toward them,
trembling, pulling two into her
sheets, three pasted together, tears.