The last chance
To hold their hands,
to touch skin soft with age,
tendons tough beneath
fragrantly layered lotion.
To hear their words,
spoken in elder tongue,
dripping love,
laughter, life.
To smell their lives,
their deeply etched air
of spice and familiarity.
To linger eyes
interlocked like fingers,
searching for every nuance of meaning.
To feel the heart
that is hearth
that is home
home once ours.
For their to be an us.
For us to be a we that continues
where each of us breathes
wherein we each add stories.
For there to be an is
in place of a was.
2019