The Body in the Other Room
The Body in the Other Room We’d arrived too late to bid adieu to—to close his eyes—my father, who had just gasped his last, rattled Breath even as we shlepped along the interstate, one Hundred twenty-nine miles, to the transient hospice: To meet his passing: twelve minutes past the nick of time. As he lay in his recently transformed state, surrounded by Some family and a gaggle of others who’d usurped my Breath and presence in that same room, You remained with me: His past-presence, but a body of unfinished works, in another room. You were with me when I didn’t have the courage To face his breathless shell in that one-less-living space: You were with me, in the ante-room, in the sterile Lobby--the magazine-strewn waiting place—where others, Surely, had People ’d alone for their own others in the other room To exhale alas: to take their own last labored breaths. In the same room, breathing our concomitant air, you Comforted me: you validated