I hold my phone like you would
if a stone started talking—warily,
ready to drop it

should it ask for blood. There is blood
on your mother’s brain, it says. Not
a lot, but we want you to know.

There’s no compression, it says, no risk
to any structures. We want to keep her
longer.

So do I, I say, and wonder what structures
I'd find in my mother’s brain—the house
where she grew up,

the convent school, the rowboat she loved
on Misery Bay—all of them bright
but for a little blood,

not enough to feed a stone. Do you have
any questions, the stone asks. I do.

How do we clean up the blood? Will it
stain her days? If more blood comes,
can she get in the boat?

It’s a difficult time, the stone says,
but she’s in good hands. I look at mine,
the lines in them like channels,

each one crossed by another.

—Brendan Constantine

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