I was helping navigate my wife’s walker through a labyrinth
of obstacles from our kitchen to our living room,
her legs weak and wobbly. I was cooking our meals even
though I can screw-up premade spaghetti sauce
in a jar. I was trying to find something for her lunch
despite pain having absconded with her appetite.

I was emptying the garbage, putting out recyclables,
sifting through cat litter with a punctured scooper.
I was feeding the cat, taking him to the vet, throwing out
the mice he’d killed that upset his tummy. I was
making eggs, English muffins, and juice for breakfast
and mixing Marilax so my wife’s digestion, cramped
by Crohn’s Disease, could proceed almost normally.

I was heating beanbags in the microwave to warm her
throbbing back and strangled knees. I was making
the bed, straightening up the living room, retrieving
the newspaper, finding poems in books to read
for her that might soothe her agony some. I was connecting
leads to the TENS Machine, pasting electrodes to her
torso and legs, in hopes of dulling her pain.

I was pushing her wheelchair through Frick Park, marveling
at how fall sun lit leaves that danced down the path
in front of us. I was cheering her poetry, overwhelmed,
at what beauty she could conjure from such cruel
and debilitating torment. I was finding YouTube channels
that played her favorite composers: Chopin, Satie,
Rachmaninoff, and had videos of her favorite poets,

Mary Oliver, Maria Gillan, Ted Kooser. I spent days
thinking up diversions: Scrabble, Reels of huskies
howling, golden retrievers cuddling babies, and hilarious
imitations of RFK Jr. claiming there’s a direct
link between Chex Cereal and the Czech Republic—
anything to ease her pain.

This is what I did while our country was dying.

This is how I counted our surfeit of bones.

This is how our lament became perpetual.

Charlie Brice won the 2020 Field Guide Poetry Magazine Poetry Contest and placed third in the 2021 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize. His ninth poetry collection is Tragedy in the Arugula Aisle (Arroyo Seco Press, 2025). His poetry has been nominated for the Best of Net Anthology and the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Atlanta Review, The Honest Ulsterman, Ibbetson Street, Chiron Review, The MacGuffin, and elsewhere.

Next Page (

Previous Page (