The Tears fall after

The heart stops.

The pain begins.

This is what we’re taught.

Then the pain ends.

and death begins,

but the heart can stop in sympathy too.

I’ve survived it.

When I watch you take your last breath,

I take my own.

I am gasping on death—feel you

rush through me like a hope—

like one last whispered word

right through my heart.

That’s when the tears fall.

That’s when it ruptures. Grief

like a hemmorhage. Stricken

like a woman can be stricken

by the death of her last son.

Husband isn’t alive to see it.

He’s been gone longer than the twins.

This one, the eldest, was the one who

went off to the woods,

to find that primal part of himself.

I guess they all did.

In their own way,

they each

came home to die.