On Kawara’s “Today” series
Jan.4.2022
A call is just a call. I pick it up.
Jan.6.2022
I lift blankets looking for my father.
Jan.7.2022
When I take off the patch, your eye is gone.
I spend the day in other people’s tears.
Jan.9.2022
Someone says your eyelid almost came off,
the doctors tried to reattach it. I
close my eye all day to see if I can
feel your dying. What is dying but a
form of hunger, visible to God. When
we pull down your shirt, your good eye opens.
All the waiting, the moon is an athlete.
Jan.11.2022
The woman who let you fall won’t look at
me. In each of us, there is a stranger,
a single road that in one instant forks.
Jan.12.2022
There’s a name for it. The way your mouth stays
open, no breathing. We hold our breaths as
if companions of your dying. Cheyne-Stokes,
named after two doctors. What if we named
everything? The last hand-squeeze before death,
the way your eye looks at me when I talk,
the way the reincarnated cry the
most, bewildered by the star’s second blink.