Lay bare this linen, pale as frost
laid gently over nameless dead—
a shroudlet for the breath I’ve lost,
a pall for words I’ve left unsaid.
Its lace, once meant for bridal veils
and tremors of a maiden’s sigh,
now hems the border where the frail
and fading meet eternity.
Upon its breast the shadowed stain
spreads like a muted requiem,
a quiet herald of the pain
that hums within my hollow stem.
The doctors speak in murmured codes,
their faces gaunt with borrowed dread;
they watch me walk the twilight road
yet dare not name the coming dead.
My mother keeps her vigil near,
her rosary a trembling thread;
she prays that God might turn His ear—
though even saints grow tired of red.
And I—still upright, still composed,
still courteous before the doom—
fold to my lips this cloth that knows
the map of my encroaching gloom.
Its pallid weft receives my blood
with all the meekness of the grave;
it drinks the tide, the nightly flood
my thinning body cannot save.
O faithful friend in final hours,
you cradle what the world must shun;
you bear the wilt of spent red flowers
that bloom when daylight’s course is run.
Should midnight claim my labored breath,
lay this beside me when I fall—
a relic gently damp with death,
the last soft witness to it all.
For in your blush of dusky rose—
half promise, half elegy’s start—
I see the truth that no one knows:
the grave first blossoms in the heart.
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