Natalie Marino

Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis is Incurable

 My grandmother’s last days.
When her voice was breaking,
when she spoke to the ghost
 
of my mother hanging
on the wall.
 
When we tried to say goodbye
she had already gone
with a bolus of morphine,
 
had already made the night red
with dark blood.
 
My grandmother now quiet as salt
was not always made of glass.
 
She used to be too loud
in the mornings spinning
her half-true stories while sitting
 
at her sewing machine then feeding
her caged brown finches.
 
When my mother worked
we would take the 245 bus line
all the way to House of Fabrics
 
and then pick out the pinkest
dress patterns. 
 
On Saturdays her laughter
cut the air like blades
 
as her saudades played
on the television; even though
 
I never learned to speak Spanish,
I knew just as well as anyone
what was happening.

My grandmother loved all her house
plants equally.  

If I could go back
I would listen to her speaking to them
as if they could be stars.

Natalie Marino is a poet and physician. Her work appears in Atlas and Alice, Gigantic Sequins, Hobart, Isele Magazine, Pleiades, Rust + Moth, The Shore, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, Memories of Stars, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press (June 2023). She lives in California.