Suddenly from the quietus of her passing
Eyes wide, she rose up from the bed in a shower of spit –
“I remember your father.”
Why wouldn’t she, she was his sister?
“When we buried him, God rest him,
Father Michael said he touched a lot of people.
And I couldn’t laugh, but God I wanted to.
He did.
And I was one of them.”
She sank back, quiet again.
The nurse stepped forward, fussed about, made soothing sounds.
I missed the moment of her dying,
Lost in her last words
Which took so many other lives along with hers.
