Company.

We all know those moments of clarity with someone we love, that tell us more than perhaps we are ready to know.

This poem “Company” is based on a story a cousin once shared with me, of a long-ago evening when she lost not just one person, but two people once so very dear to her.

Company

She asked him to do one thing
In all those years.

One thing she asked of him,
To sit up with her all the night long
As she waited word of her mother,
Sick, suddenly, and so very far away.

The call came in the small secret hours of morning
and she crept to the phone
To hear the worst she could imagine,
Her mother was gone from her, forever,
In a place she would never know,
Worlds away.

Narrow light seeped in at the window.
She felt the chill of the new morning.
And she felt it alone.