The skin of your hands was paper, flecked with liver spots.
Ella Fitzgerald played as i dunked them in soapy water,
as you sighed, I can't remember when someone took such good care of me.
Your fingers were long and tapered, each joint a swollen nut of arthritis.
I pushed back the cuticles and painted the nails pink.
Later I plucked one of the last yellow Thanksgiving mums to place
in the white wooliness of your hair.

Two weeks later at the oncologist's office you held out
your hands, waiting for the technician, who loved your
White Shoulders perfume, to notice your perfect nails
as he loaded you into the gleaming tube of the MRI.
Two months later someone had painted your nails beige
and wrapped your hands around jet rosary beads.
We gathered around you and grasped the brass handles;
beneath you was a gray cement sleeve, so deep it made me dizzy,
and frozen brown earth in clots around the edge, covered by
banks of flowers, and the dazzling January snow.

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