THE MATTRESS

I was on the ground, on my knees,

deflating an earth-toned rubber mattress.

It was left behind when hospice came 

to collect their bed and after 

the Neptune Society had come to collect my father.

It was a cushion meant to keep him comfortable

and bed sores at bay as the end drew near.

As I kneaded the mattress with my knees, the air

escaped in deep exhalations, like the ones 

my father had made the night before

as my mother and I sat with him

in his last hours.

I had never been so close

to the act of breathing, 

to breath itself,

to the thin, fragile line

between breathing and not.

Never had I watched a breath

come and go so intently as I did

as I sat at my father’s side.

A shriveled shell that once buoyed a life,

provided creature comfort,

was all that remained

when the breathing finally stopped.

And with it also went, thankfully, 
my father's suffering.

Grief, I imagine, will fold over us,

my mother and I, in the coming days,

as we learn to breath in a world that no longer

includes my father and his breath.