November-dark.
Her hand signal,
too much for her to speak,
too much to understand.

“Blink.”
Her eyelids just ripple, twitch.
“Was that a blink?”
She weaved the lids up,
and let them thud back down.
The pain weighs that much.

A day with—
pain
patience
pain.
The word doesn’t hurt enough.

Morphine,
she asked for it.
This was the end,
how she would go.

It’s been twenty years.
I’ve forgotten so much.

 

Source: Ordinary Light by Tracy K Smith

Method: The craft of this poem came from pure inspiration to teach my first-year-writing students the wonders of how one genre of writing can cross into another to make something new.

Tyrell is a Masters of Fine Arts Candidate at Columbia College Chicago. His work has appeared in the Lab Review, Don’t Talk to me About Love online Magazine, and Punctuate. a Non-Fiction Magazine.