she walks across the bedroom floor,
her carpet slippers huffing with the effort,
and when she sinks down beside me,
her timeless face sagging with the years of tears
that it has cried,
(and hasn't cried)
she looks up at me
with a small, sad smile,
offering up the faded nightshirt
that has hung on the door
for the last
sixteen years
“Here,” she says,
“I realized
that it no longer
holds his smell.”
and with that
she pressed it one last time
to her face,
and I could see her leave a tear on the collar,
and then she put it in my lap
and patted my hand
as if to say
she was too old for love,
and that she didn't mind,
and it was my turn now,
and she truly believed
that she would see him again soon,
that he would be waiting for her
just beyond the sky,
and that stars were just
the holes to heaven,
and for a minute
I wanted to believe it too