Thank you to Dagmara K at Spillwords for publishing my poem today. Please like at Spillwords if you get the chance. (there's a place to click a little heart)

https://spillwords.com/reading-to-my-dead-friend/

READING TO MY DEAD FRIEND AT HER BEDSIDE

written by: Linda Imbler

 

After your breath turned around,
they came to remove you.

Before you could be carried away,
I wanted you to hear
some of your favorite words
one more time.

I searched your library
for those books you held most dear,
those you had gathered and preserved
with the utmost care.

I found the passages that you had told me
you’d experienced as enchantments.

I put another pillow under your head,
an aptly placed temple
for one about to re-worship
the gods of the lexicon.

I read aloud:

-a passage spoken by a small arachnid
that changed another creature’s life
-several passages from “A Man Called Ove,”
you laughed so hard when I called him Ohv.
-clues recited by amateur detective Nancy Drew
passages that lured us into loving mystery writers
-lines from Moby Dick, whose work I first despised
until you convinced me to pay attention
to what Ishmael said rather than did.

Ideas that were abstract,
but so is death,
and now future excerpts will look different to me.