Contending
︎︎︎ Don Narkevic
︎ July 6, 2021
I did not agree to be
ninety-seven, widowered,
nursing-homed, children
scattered like dandelion planets
blown away by me as a child, playing
catchup with the bigger kids,
how I outlived them all
without telling them to go
to hell.
This afternoon a nun visits,
holds my hand,
her thumb rubbing the tributaries
of my blue-black veins.
She clips my fingernails,
tells stories about Jesus,
how the nails fused him to timber
he would never fashion
into a yoke or winnowing fork,
how sometimes the things that hold us
let us go.
ninety-seven, widowered,
nursing-homed, children
scattered like dandelion planets
blown away by me as a child, playing
catchup with the bigger kids,
how I outlived them all
without telling them to go
to hell.
This afternoon a nun visits,
holds my hand,
her thumb rubbing the tributaries
of my blue-black veins.
She clips my fingernails,
tells stories about Jesus,
how the nails fused him to timber
he would never fashion
into a yoke or winnowing fork,
how sometimes the things that hold us
let us go.
Don Narkevic lives in Buckhannon, West Virginia. He received his MFA at National University. Recent work appears/will appear in Rattle, JMWW, and Solum Literary Press. Don grew up in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, the son of a homemaker and a welder.