It Seems Like You’ve Been Preparing Your Whole Life

for devastation, my therapist tells me.
I fear grief but crave its clarity,
its thumb pressing into my eye socket.

The first face that God wore
was my mother’s, and, by extension,
mine. When the tumor bloomed
at the base of her brain, I knew

a good daughter was supposed to be
afraid, but I still believed my mother
was the tallest woman in the world,
believed that death could not utter

our names without choking on its own
futility. When she survived, I made her
promise to live forever, or, at the very least,
draw her last breath in tandem with mine.

I was too young then to recognize
the cruelty of my command. We’ve both
wished to die, though neither of us
has spoken it aloud. If I were kind,

I would have let her leave, but my love
is selfish: I want to keep every precious
thing preserved in amber, even if
it suffocates. How many times

were we yanked back from the edge
of obliteration by the thread around
our waists tethering my life to hers?
No longer a daughter, yet I remain bound

to goodness. When the tests indicate
an anomaly in my mother’s heart,
I fall apart. Don’t worry, she tells me.
I’m not allowed to die, remember?