If you had come into that room
after her stroke to find
my mother-in-law Sue Reed
and me, our heads bent
toward each other, making facesso her face would remember
what it had forgot
of the expressions for surprise
and dismay, or if
you had come in the momentI tried to teach her lips
by forming small lips
and making them breathe,
first to the left, then
to the right of my nose
until she began to laugh,
and laugh because she couldn’t
on one side, and both
of us laughed, you might
have imagined what we did
had less to do with instruction
or sorrow than the antics
of lovers, she giving me
her hand then, I taking it
in mine to stroke it
over and over in the pleasure
of being together in the room
where you might have come
to imagine the two of us
together, just as we were.
