An ounce of knowledge

To paint a living mural

Symbiotic and solitary

A refuge

A space to die

She slips her hand

Into soft soil

Feeling, listening to the hum

Of the earth

Skin, cracked and textured, grips

Her strength reminds me of my father’s shoulders

Before the fall

When the diagnosis was prostatic adenocarcinoma

Just above the line of shrubs

That ache and tangle for a spot in the sun

A scar runs upward

Marking of the scalpel

She had once worn a vine

A tattoo of sprouting green

A scar of rotting grey

His scar left him with incontinence

His scar left him in bed

She too was plagued by a cancer

The strips of bark, crackled, dry

The dust of death

The choking vines

Rotting from the inside

She stretches her fingers

Scratching the sky

Raking the clouds

A refuge

A space to die