I beg it all to stop, the vertigo, the drunk

need to step off. For worse, the nurses tell me.

Nearly wingless, they crouch in the sleet,

elongated voids, their heads bent under

the ceiling. They are out of place, the color

of rain that drums sleep into you, tacks falling

on roofs. They begin to nod off, a half dozen

aunts who toss me like a stone in a river

of vows. They touch me when I least want it,

jealous (I think) of my breasts and eyes.

They’re stretched so thin, their faces pulled to a gaunt

sneer, smeared with perfumes swiped from tacky

residue in bottles. They’re constructed of the anger

of children who aren’t little suns, aren’t beloved

at all. Then, one day, they are gone. I am my own

hands again, and death an animal on a dry pine bed.

In a canoe on the Delaware River,

my son and I once slowed to watch a black bear,

lanky and plush, splash over river grass round

the point, startling the swimmers from their griefs.