Womb full of death where once was
a lush, loamy bed. The doctor says
it must be weeded and scraped,

the remaining seeds sprayed with
Round-Up. Instead of seeds I see
fireflies flickering on his dark screen.

Outside, the patio lights are dimming.
Here in the hospice room, my mother
reigns—tyranny of the invalid. An owl

flies in, a raccoon appears, but we are
unmoved. We have been practicing
shapeshifting. My sister-in-law enters

(although she died last year) and says
she too imagined fireflies. Time is fluid,
like morphine. An hour passes faster

in the hospice room than it does down
the street, across town, in Paris.
I ask the doctor, why are we here?

Why not birdsong instead of poison?

/

Deborah Tobola’s work has received awards and recognition from the Academy of American
Poets, Pushcart Prize, the National Writers Union, the California Arts Council, and the National
Endowment for the Arts. She earned a B.A. in English in 1988 from the University of Montana and an MFA in Creative Writing in 1990 from the University of Arizona. Her memoir, Hummingbird in Underworld: Teaching in a Men’s Prison (She Writes Press, 2019) garnered positive reviews in the Los Angeles Times and the Los Angeles Review of Books, as well as winning awards in creative nonfiction, social justice, and social issues.