Her plea traveled through
the microwave spectrum,
please take care of your health,
please make your health
your next concern.
And I could hear her promise
of salty soups and sorted salads
weaving through the eaves.

I search for my seven sisters in the sky
but they are lost in the Southern hemisphere
and they have no plans to iterate
their echoes bathed in blue wisdom.

Their reflective nebulosity is only dust,
filtered light through floating dust
and nothing more,
each speck more majestic
than the many disappointments
of my life, even more enduring
than the poetry of life,
all these fine excuses.

I have a shirt collar to press,
iron both sleeves,
the top button is slightly loose,
and a wine stain colors
one inside seam at the wrist.
My shoes are distended leather,
they are now easier to wear.
I shave. I splash on aftershave
and a memory of an impatient girl
appears in the mirror behind me.
She is always in a rush, needs to apply
her makeup in a rush, this memory.
I smile at her in her frantic hurry.
I tie and retie my tie and she puts her hand
upon my spine to steady herself,
she adjusts high heels, hair curling down,
I step back and she steps forward,
her shoulders dance as she stretches
her little black dress tight
and smooth against her body.

Bloodshed follows inexplicable,
strong mascara strokes thick
against long curved eyelashes,
contortions of full lips
as they seep red blood, these
red lips. She kisses a Kleenex,
a gauze gift of pink gossamer
pendulum wafts upon the floor.
She leans into the mirror and
arranges cleavage and, somehow,
perhaps within the smell of talcum,
the luminous granules of white dust,
she silently sighs and meets my sad gaze
and slightly smirks as she vanishes away
into the fading granules of falling dust.

She slowly vanishes away with a smirk,
leaving me with shaving cream
covering the right half of my face,
a razor held in my left-hand.
Stretch marks spider out
from an overextended torso,
sweaty and wet along the creases,
under the enveloping folds,
the deepening hole in the middle.
Tissues overflow in the bin. Tope.

Mother, your plea is pure philosophia.
And this is the wrong time of the year
for my sisters to look down kindly and
remind me that I will never again hear
any more breathlessly sung epithalamia.