Lilies

[Lyric]

Lilies

She's always loved fresh white lilies.
In the glass on the table, flowers stand in
ivory stillness, expiring in silence, while I,
a killer of things plucked fresh and pure,
dream of flying and falling hard
in a battered leather hospital chair.

The machines keep the time, tick-tick, marking
the last moments of mother. She is fading
here, like the pearls of dew on the lilies
before they were cut down young,
grasping the earth in defiance of my knife.
Together, they are breathing their last.

She says the pain isn't bad, but her lips are thin
red slashes when the morphine wears off, drawn
tight because it's been three hours, and are they sure
it isn't time yet? She's staring at the lilies.
I know she lies to me because she loves me.
I am witness to her end as she was my beginning.

Today she doesn't want a priest, she wants to live
thirty more years and die in her sleep, she wants
to see her April flowerbeds bursting with lilies,
she wants time. I can do nothing. We are caught
in a trap of clocks that tick too loud, too fast, goodbye.
I love her, so I brought her the lilies.

Tonight I'll watch her wither here beside them
in a bed with a number, in a little room down
a hall full of whispers and sobs and the ticking of clocks.
I want to rage that it's meaningless, it's obscene, but
it's too late. The bell has rung. The season has passed.
We two can do nothing now but watch the dying lilies.

Tomorrow I'll lay her beneath them.

--Brandy L. Heinze

[Jennifer C]

1. Thank you

That is sad and beautiful. Made me think of my grandmother.