This home where I spread thin my youth has become bitter with death.
I don't know how my brother can live here.

I have returned to take Aunt Vicki to the place where she will die.
he old woman comes quiet as a saint.
The day wears on us, too many papers to read and sign.
We begin to stretch taut nerves.
She decides it is time to go home --
there is too much sunlight through the window.

The nurse pulls the shade next to Vicki's bed,
finally it is dark enough, she is safe from a ravenous sun.
When the doctor arrives he suggests sleep would be best
perhaps a pill will help the patient rest through the night.

Under a shattered sky
each of us lives between thin layers of beginning and end,
light and dark, asleep and awake,
An empty halo drifts above my ghost of a skull.
Time is a tree and all our lives breaking branches.