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The wound too freshly stitched

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 April 2021

Paul RousseauOpen the ORCID record for Paul Rousseau[Opens in a new window]
Paul Rousseau*
Affiliation:
Palliative Care, Charleston, SC
*
Author for correspondence: Paul Rousseau, Palliative Care, 1531 Wakendaw Road, Mount Pleasant, Charleston, SC 29464, USA. E-mail: palliativedoctor@aol.com
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Information

Type
Poetry
Information
Palliative & Supportive Care , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , June 2021, pp. 390
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press
Those final moments before death,
when body and bones are
pitched to the precipice
with footprints of suffering,
her heart slapped slower and slower until blood,
lured by the weight of gravity,
settled in hollow clefts like spilt mercury.
I stood bedside,
drooped like a wilted sunflower,
my tears, in rivulets,
dropping to her sweat-slicked brow.
I tried to breathe,
but grief, lodged in small vessels,
suffocated like stones in my throat —
and there was nothing I could do,
the wound too freshly stitched.

(Dedicated to my wife Pamela, who died October 17, 2006)