I’ll Love You Forever, I’ll Like You for Always

I propped Mom’s head up, all ten thousand pounds
of her skull, so she could watch the robins fashion
their nest atop the dead AC. I’m tired,
she said. I fed her cracked lips blue pills. I took one
and rolled it in my palm like a tiny egg. I rationed her time
with the window, sunlight shattered the usual slick pitch
of the room. When I cracked the shades, Mom pretended
she was a coffin filled with the shadows of everyone
she ever loved. The birds wove strands of her hair into their urgent
nest. Death was cunning the way its knuckles
rapped the glass. Fledglings had flung their reflections
against the pane before, but this sound
was hollow. I imagined it in the uncut grass,
feigning a broken neck, legs clawing for a lifeline.
It stills—a ruse, huffs its wings. Mom asked, what
was that? I drizzled ice chips in the whistle
of her mouth and said nothing.