I hear the phone inside and then a cry.
It's my daughter's friend, Michelle.
Someone says to me, Her grandmother
just died.
She must have been
expecting it. Hoping it wouldn't
happen. And then so suddenly.
How can I
tell her that everything is disappearing,
that I feel the dying-all around me
like a soft, inconsolable rain.
How can l explain to her,
running toward her life like this,
that one day, whatever she is following
will blur or split or become one path,
and although she will remember
many ways back, she will take none of them.