We lied to you that last year. It passed, we’d say or else
you’d do it anyway. Against your body, refuse
to drink and eat and wash, refuse to take the pills.
Refuse our hands. You’d sit there mumbling
in Yiddish, calling quietly for Him as though
he were your husband, Gotteniu tiyer, Gotteniu veis mir.
Call it love or prayer or madness, that language
between dead and living ghosts. Gotteniu.
Beloved. The words clung to your mouth,
your lips so dry that year we lied, I did it for you.
As an excuse to starve at first. To thin
closer to bone. To know how skin
wears us. The next year you were dead
and still I kept and keep on starving,
stretching out my hands to feel for ghosts,
for you and him and maybe Him.
Gotteniu. Ghost-God, Ghost-great thing
that ends or begins with father.
