Long Division

Death divides us into those who can clean
the blood stains of family and those who cannot.

The coroner called it pooling, normal,
this dark troubled-spot by her bed,

but I named it place of her last misstep, thought,
and had no desire to clean it. For days

I walked past it, stepping over its threshold
as I entered the room to part the black out

curtains covering the glass door to the patio,
but the light never seemed long enough

to reach it, wash it—even evening’s length
of light could not touch it. I took out

my measuring tape, a pencil, a small notebook,
a matter of inches. I thought perhaps

during one of June’s long days the sun
could make it. I had plans, calendars

and almanacs; though, I always fail
at forethought and math, but on that shrinking

late September day, the sun stopped two
and a quarter inches from her blood. I know.

I measured twice. When I stretched out
next to it, almost my whole body aglow

in dusk-light, all the dead relatives
from their pictures seemed to watch.

I memorized the ages of all of them,
then divided by the distance between frames,

added the baby nephew before I subtracted
all the Baptist family in Dallas, and I understood

this is where it ends, mother, alone and blue-lipped
on the stained carpet as the gathered dead

look down on us with all of those unblinking
eyes, all those still mouths, and that carefully

measured distance between us shrinking.