The Nurse
You can feel
his fingers
can’t you
wrapped in smooth
blue nitrile
how they taper
to their ends
almost feminine
elegant, surprising
given the ten years
he’s spent holding
death’s messes
in his hands
as he cradles your chin
softly telling you
Let’s load up
you who may or may
not hear, your
eyes gazing off
into the space above us
glazed over like
warmed milk
that’s formed a skin
as he deftly slides
the Roxanol under
your tongue
Between midnight
and eight
between the meds
checking vitals, watching
your pulse bound
at the base
of your throat
he tells me things
how on nights off
those same fingers
wail on bass
in a punk band
He’s a son who
locks himself
in his room, stays up
all night, gaming
a wife he married
when they were mere
kids, confesses
death work isn’t
easy but gives him
purpose, helping others
exit this world
Stoned sometimes
but with dignity
We laugh and I drift
off, doze for a bit
and then it’s four
time to reposition you
to keep your skin
from forming sores
so we lower the rails
stand on either side
of the bed and lift
his blue hands
holding you fast
as I wipe under your ass
the backs of your legs
thin as my arm
when a sound
subterranean, I think
it can’t be human
erupts from your open
mouth and for one moment
I think of asking
the night nurse
to touch me, I’m
married, he’s married
we are standing
over your body
we have you in our arms
but I want him
with those long
blue fingers to make me
cry out too
Momma, I don’t want his
great tenderness
In my mind I beg him
Keep the gloves on
but please, take the
full dead weight of this
from me
Elisabeth Adwin Edwards’s poems have appeared in The Tampa Review, Rust + Moth, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, The American Journal of Poetry, South Florida Poetry Journal, and elsewhere; her prose has been published in Hobart, CutBank, On The Seawall, and other journals. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize. A native of Massachusetts, she lives in Los Angeles with her husband and teen daughter in an apartment filled with books.
