viaticum

(Latin: provisions for a journey; also, the Eucharist given to the dying)

i have become a man who checks

the gauge before every trip —

not the gas.

your mouth.

seven days apart is seven days

of empty interstate,

so i am topping off

in the driveway, in the kitchen,

at the door while the car idles,

storing you the way a camel

is rumored to store water,

the way my grandmother put up

green beans in mason jars

against a winter

she could feel coming.

it doesn’t work.

i know it doesn’t work.

i do it anyway.

the label swore it would fade,

but the first one never wears off.

a basement in the fall,

carpet the color of weak tea,

the television on

so nobody upstairs would hear

two hearts

failing their physicals.

i could draw you that room

from memory.

i couldn’t draw a single thing

from yesterday.

and the last one i gave my mother —

her forehead, in that room

with the humming machines —

is filed in the very same drawer,

crystal,

permanent,

the kiss you can’t take back

because taking it back

would mean she’s still here

to return it to.

there were kisses

i should have left in their wrappers.

there were kisses i never collected —

a doorstep in 1989

where i said goodnight

like a coward says amen —

and i have carried

their absence

longer than i carried

some of the ones i got.

the opportunities missed.

the opportunities kissed.

this ledger never balances.

so tonight, before the suitcase,

i am filling the tank past full,

letting it run over,

wasteful as a teenager,

because provision is just

a fancy word for prayer —

and because someday

one of these

will be the last one,

and i will not be told

which.