The platelets are being delivered through an IV

into the ever-shrinking sea of my mother.

Today I have brought lemon pound cake

and orange blossom lotion.

All the ingredients are French

and feel like cousins you rarely see

and never fully understand.

I place my earbuds in my mom’s ears so she can hear a violin

moving through Ernst’s 6 Polyphonic Etudes.

The earbuds are the shape of petals. Her ears are the shape

of baby spoons.

The lotion I’m rubbing into my mother

smells like you and the pound cake is the same

yellow as the ribbon I used

to tie your wrists together in a neat bow.

A man across the room is making a low moan as a needle

gets inserted into the top of his hand.

Like your moan, but male and softer.

The infusion floor is no place

for an erection, but it’s difficult not to imagine being alone

in an exam room with my mother’s nurse

who’s wearing a ponytail as if everything will be fine.

It’s my birthday. I am fifty years old today. My mother asks

what I have planned. This, I say, I’m doing this.

But what are you doing to celebrate?

When she falls asleep,

I move my chair as close to her as possible. I place a blanket

over the two of us, my head on her shoulder.

I close my eyes.

My head lifts and lowers like the hull of a ship.

A nurse comes over and asks if we have

everything we need.

I think what he means is, do we have everything

we are allowed to have.