The Orphan Hydrangeas
It is midnight.
With half-dreaming eyes
she is wheezing as loud as
the haunting wind;
blowing the moon away.
A dog, howling, is running
after the fear-stricken moon.
I dial the three sinister numbthe ambulance comes
its lights, turning and twisting,
lighten the Syringa lilac twigs
awakened by her distress.
Sleep is lying inside dark houses
No one opens a window
No one asks.
The ambulance rolls heavily
on the fresh asphalt
as if driving through a desert sand
the fresh tar smells of death.
Her anxious eyes stretch towards me
to keep me at her side.
3: 00 a.m. A doctor’s call
hammers down the word “ Airway intubation”
on my head. “It’s better you came”
Thirty days of struggle! She wins. Death strides away
She goes home. She doesn’t trust death.
With white hair on a white pillow
body covered under a white sheet
my mother’s eyes looked like two fireflies
with no lights. She lost the second fight
to a humiliated death that returned, cowardly
sneaked upon her, and blindfolded her life.
I watered her orphan lilacs and the quince tree
that she had planted with her tremulous hands.