Watching, I held your foot, still warm.
After a night of arching backed struggle.
My tears migrating back, intravenously.

Those tubes in your body, mouth, arm,
Those fluids, in your lungs, transfused,
Those moments in my memory now.

Listening, I saw you overdose, cooling.
Springing open, your eyes, quaking,
Dying at my command, you left me.

Those tears you drank via needles
were mine, your son, from our sea.
Now I sit thinking of drowned sailors.

Pneumonia waves swallowing you up.
This life preserver that sits before me,
the one with our family name encircling,
begins to curl in the pyre I built for you.

A Viking funeral, the ocean inside you,
the ship, your skin, laughter, your breath.

And breathe in the collapse of release.

I touched your face, kissed it, weeping.

I apologize for not being with you,
And run screaming through life unmoored.

I am not okay with death, with my part,
a jigsaw puzzle’s missing piece on the wharf