I listen to him breathing until he stops
suddenly in a gagging gasp, then silence
that stretches too long before he begins
to breathe again. The doctors say it is
complex – tissue in the back of his throat
collapsing, relaxing when it ought to tighten,
his brain sending the wrong messages to
the muscles that control his breath. He was
tested. Sleeping pills in a strange bedroom,
the slick pads of monitors taped to his skin,
each breath a line in a computer. Afterward,
he slept with a machine, worried when he
would twist and turn that the thick plastic of its
cording would strangle him — until hospice.
Now he snores again, gets caught in the pattern
of his own stuttering breath. Tomorrow he will
be fatigued, have difficulty concentrating, will not
be sure of my name. Beside his bed, I listen for
his choking, his grasping for air — for his last.