The Ice Ladder

The Ice Ladder

In hospice, you had me read poetry I wrote when we dated, and I held your hand as it withered into a brittle lattice, until they told me it was time to let go, after I begged you for one last dance. Cancer took you but it was December; everything dies then. The dog waits by the window nightly now, hoping to slather you in terrier kisses; a day apart from you an eternity for her, for us all. I envy her renewable hope of your return; my loss only deepens. 

“He’s not breathing.”

I’m angry about the snow. It started falling the day we buried you; it wasn’t supposed to remain in April, but it’s all I see, so I shape it to my will. Neighbors think I’m crazy, sculpting parallel stringers daily, higher, straighter, frosting carved rungs at dusk with shivering garden hoses. They used to offer help; chipped in for a plowman, sent sons with spades, told me I shouldn’t be out there at my age. But I move heaven and earth in the darkening snow.

“We’re losing him!”

Now I’m on a gurney racing to surgery and all I can do is count fast-passing banks of fluorescent bulbs adhered to crackled ceiling tiles and dream of argentine silk bathing your shoulders in the breakfast nook; Sunday morning coffee and eggs; ketchup on the corner of your mouth. You get closer, clearer, every rotation of the casters; your smile crystalizing, your gaze raising toward me. When it began – oppressive weight on my shoulders and chest, fire-line seething down my arm – I remembered everything, incontrovertibly; the softness of your lips; your eyes, radiant. Now it’s hazy; voices bark, garbled, further away. This wasn’t supposed to happen, even if it’s what I wanted.

“Clear!”

I embrace the engulfing blackness, but then you’re gone, again, and I’m hollow; caught between the night and the eastern sky.

“I’ve got a pulse.”

Last spring, everything bloomed and ants infiltrated the kitchen like hatchlings, but we both knew it was just the pheromones so we let them soldier on, laughing. I will see you again, but this morning I brush ants from the peonies I picked for the nook and let them hasten, unabated.