Middle of the day and sleep just won’t come near
The ghosts are walking circles and the house feels sharp and clear
An image caught me sideways, sent me reeling back in time
To a kid with his Nintendo and his mother on her dime
She watched the screen like it was church, addicted to the tale
She couldn’t work the controller but she’d wait without fail
She’d ask at dawn if I was playing before I got my cup
I lost interest early but I finished it to wrap it up
Simple memories you never know will carry on with you
The dumb and small and laughing things, the ones that cut right through
Gone in 2007 but I still hear her laugh
And everything that hurt the most is printed on my behalf
We were poor but not for lack of money in those days
My father drank the income down in alcohol-soaked haze
But something lived inside him that the cancer finally freed
The man she always saw in him was someone I could need
The foot infection scared me, sounded simple on its face
A sliver that got hostile in a warm and careless place
A dime-sized spot that doctor shrugged and sent her out the door
Within two weeks the darkness crept and then there was no more
They amputated, then her heart gave out and then the rest
Seven months of fighting in those disinfected corridors and test
She spent her last months wanting home and talking of the fall
When my niece would start school, the greatest thing of all
In critical care I slept inside the lobby on the floor
She made the dietitian white with jokes about her score
The leg revealed beneath the blanket, face completely straight
She laughed and apologized and laughed again at what was fate
I had to make the call about the painkillers and the end
Had to be the one to tell her she was never coming home again
She talked about the invisible cat, the weather, and the light
Then took a nap she never woke from in the middle of the night
My niece went off to school two days before the final day
I told my mother even though I don’t know if the words could stay
I went to one wake, skipped the funeral, and saw the stone just once
But I’ll remember boy and girl testicles and Zelda for months and months
Goodbye mom, sleep well