My first impulse is to clean the baseboards. I cradle 

the phone tenderly, swaddled as a newborn. I reach 

for rag and orange oil. I wipe the dust. I wipe the cat hair. 

I wipe the tumor, stage four, growing in his brain.

 

It is growing fast, but I clean fast too. I wipe clean through 

to the varnish, and I keep going. Vacuum next, 

that satisfying crevice tool, all dust vanquished 

in the whirlwind of my grief. My touch is soft but firm. 

 

We married the same year, four white dresses, then three 

black suits in two years. If we had known then 

what we know now, would we still have smiled in the photos? 

 

She was a bridesmaid, a sister of bone 

not blood. He fostered my kitten, found 

in a farm combine at two weeks old, grew 

 

her until she could sustain her own existence. 

He read at my wedding, said marriage 

was a fearful gamble, and now we are afraid 

 

and going all in on red, staking hope 

on a miracle doctors say won’t come. 

 

I wipe edges of our photo frame, I wipe 

the glass over faces that are going 

 

and gone. I wipe and I wipe, but the fog 

doesn’t clear. Nobody tells you how 

 

to clean up after the party, when devastation 

detonates like confetti. It is everywhere. 

 

I can’t reach it all.