When I look over, she’s suspended inside
a held breath I’m not sure she’ll complete:
a cartoon of anticipation, she appears
desperate to emerge from such horrible
limbo. Then something releases,
her air rushes back, and here she is,
trapped like me, our boy behind us,
alive, turning her attention to the door,
the throb in her arm, to the woman
who has appeared at her window to ask
a set of life-giving questions she can begin
to form an answer to. And she speaks.