I was texting

after Coffee Break by Kwame Dawes

by Betsy Mars

After your breakfast and a shave,

bathed and massaged, you relaxed.

The intake person had come –

you hadn’t been in hospice

more than 18 hours.

The dietician stopped by

to find out your favorite foods –

no holds barred now that death was near.

The social worker came to offer whatever

other comforts she could bring.

I muted my phone. After all of these visits

and messages from friends and family,

I focused on you at last.

Your eyes were closed

but you were awake, I could tell.

The thing to do was to read you a story,

just as you had so often done.

I don’t recall the book,

but as I told you the backstory

and resumed on the page where I had left off,

that damned prescription came to mind.

I said I’ll be right back, and picked up my phone.

By the time I finished, you had gone home.

* * * * *

"I Was Texting" was first published in Redshift.

Betsy Mars is a poet, photographer, educator, and recently founded a press, publishing Unsheathed: 24 Contemporary Poets Take Up the Knife (Kingly Street Press) in October 2019. Her work has been published in The California Quarterly, RATTLE (photo), The Ekphrastic Review, and Verse-Virtual, among others, as well as in a number of anthologies. Betsy's first chapbook, Alinea (Picture Show Press), was released in January 2019. She is an enthusiastic traveller as well as animal lover which creates a lot of ambivalence when she is away from home.