The skin of your hands was paper, flecked with liver spots,
your fingers long and tapered, each joint a swollen nut of arthritis.
Ella Fitzgerald played as I dunked them in soapy water;
you sighed, I can't remember when someone took such good care of me.
I pushed back the cuticles and painted the nails pink,
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 with 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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