The Passageway

Spooned together, he reaches over my shoulder
with an arm that is almost all bone,
makes a hand gesture like snuffing candles
one by one, says, “The lights are all going out.”

He is sick of being sick. Inadequate to this task
I tell him it is alright now to let go,
as if he were a cat in a thunder storm
terrified of the enormous sound

round rolling, surrounding us. Nose to back
we cling together in our disparate realms.
Our bodies know the deeper truth, soon
we will each pick our way through the dark alone.