Cosmetology
I’ve led my final bible study and
just want to go before I need
another haircut, my mother said
two weeks into the three months
she’d been given, the last supper
of cancer swelling in her belly. Small
anyway, she’d been steadily shrinking
in inverse proportion to the growth
of her dogged will. Doctors don’t
know everything. This is going
fast. And a week later she was dead,
praise God, since the girls downstairs
were butchers. Ever see their work?
D. R. James, retired from 40 years of teaching college writing, literature, and peace studies, lives with his wife, a former hospice social worker and bereavement counselor, in Saugatuck, Michigan. His latest of 10 collections is Mobius Trip (Dos Madres Press). https://www.amazon.com/author/drjamesauthorpage