My step-mother didn’t open her eyes
the last week of her life, as she lay in her sunroom
tucked into the white sheets
of a rented hospital bed.
But she turned her head
to the sound of our voices,
as if her eyes—her beautiful blue eyes—
were open. Something in her
taking us in. She was ninety-three
and ready. Her face, shining on us
like a sun. Which is how my sister-in-law looked
the Saturday before Thanksgiving—
as she reclined in the living room
in her favorite chair,
looking out the picture window
onto a day that was cold and bright.
She was sixty-one, bald after a month
of treatment, but radiant.
The doctors gave her a week.
And someone took a picture of her.
And you can see it in her eyes. The seeing.
Of something. Maybe everything.
by Lisa Dordal
Lisa Dordal teaches poetry at Vanderbilt University and is the author of Mosaic of the Dark (2018), Water Lessons (2022), and Next Time You Come Home (2023). Her poetry has appeared in The Sun, Narrative, Image, Christian Century, Best New Poets, and Essential Queer Voices of U.S. Poetry.
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