Grace
In the moments of his leaving himself
his hands shook and could not take mine.
Instead he stared
and handed through the silence
the slightest cup of my chin
rolled my cheeks between his fingers
like dough, and in those seconds
he still needed me,
and it was a blessing as complete as bread.
Inside the night-time minutes
he held me with this gaze
until the slender tap of knuckle
at his throat wound back and down.
I touched my palms in prayer
to stay the longer held in that stare
as the trimmed nail of his tongue
lay still, and settled clasped into its last-grasp.
This poem won the Yeovil International Literary Prize for Poetry 2013.
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