Weight of Living
by Daniel Lurie
A blue hue through the window shade, quiet
morning, not even the birds have stirred.
The cat’s face crinkles into a smile as he places
his head between the cleft of my chest and chin.
My sister says I must remind him of our mother,
as I lie in her bed surrounded by medical documents.
There’s nothing exceptional about living. Organs
burst and breathe without a thought. All you must
do is compel your bones from room to room.
Tug a tomorrow rope in front of yesterday—
where I left her to swaddle the television remote.
As the hospital shuttered. Tumors ripple under
my fingers while I wait for the ghost of a sigh
to rise from the cat. Caught in the act by a nurse
who had stumbled upon me holding a mirror
beneath my mother’s purple lips.
Daniel Lurie is a Jewish, rural writer from eastern Montana. He holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Idaho, where he currently teaches first-year composition. Lurie is a poetry reader for Chestnut Review and co-founder and co-editor of Outskirts Literary Journal. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Pleiades, The Madison Review, Sonora Review, Wild Roof Journal, West Trade Review, Birdcoat Quarterly, Fugue, and elsewhere.