Teetering

When the body that’s failing
isn’t my own
even its smallest cough
wakes me.

I wait for the trees to show up
outside before
I would even consider
moving and waking him.

When he teeters in the bathroom,
collapses against me,
is it time to call the doctor,
the ambulance?

I don’t fight him about sleeping
with the cold fan on
or refusing to eat anything
for a day.

Now we just walk to the corner,
not over the hill–
and I watch for the high curb
and the storm drains. . .

Cammy Thomas has two collections of poems with Four Way Books: Inscriptions (2014) and Cathedral of Wish (2006), winner of the Norma Farber First Book Award. Her poems are forthcoming or have recently appeared in Tampa Review, Ocean State Review, The Missouri Review, and elsewhere. Cammy lives in Lexington, Massachusetts.