Nicholas Montemarano

I alone have escaped to tell you

what I saw and heard: a row of screens,

one for each room, so the nurses could view

their patients trying to live. They couldn't see

the virus except by what it did, all it knew

to do—kill and spread and scheme

to live forever. The nurses watched my mother through

a screen, watched me watch her, and we

knew how it would end—with her end.

I wouldn't have wished the others to die,

but no one in another room did. Why

was my mother, of all that day, the one who went.

My selfish heart is owed no answer. So, hello

years of long, low days. It ceased to hurt me,

       though so slow.

From Issue 48, Summer 2024 / First online publication June 01, 2024

Nicholas Montemarano is the author of five books, most recently a memoir in verse, If There Are Any Heavens (Persea Books, 2022). His writing has won a Pushcart Prize and an NEA fellowship. He is the Alumni Professor of Creative Writing & Belles Lettres at Franklin & Marshall College.