Popsicle

When my mother in her hospital bed began moving,
mumbling, when it seemed she might live
after all, the nurses reattached her tubes and lines,
and the doctors returned, gave orders, made notes,
and my mother, eyes closed, whispered, Thirst.

A nurse offered a popsicle, but warned us
to be vigilant: she could choke any moment.
My mother, cheeks sunken, weak from long stillness
of not-dying, was able to hold it herself, the marvel
of its bright, improbable red. Her lips colored at its touch.

We stood by her bed, wordless, watching her lick
and not choke, lick and not choke, watching as though
she were a newborn bird, or a toddler, wide-eyed
at her first taste of snow, or a woman in her eighties
who did not die from a hemorrhage in her brain.

She brimmed with pleasure, fully-absorbed
by the sweet cherry ice on her tongue. When she was done,
she looked up at us, at the room, the blue window
full of sky, then carefully licked the stick, her fingers, her wrist,
and smiled and smiled, and said, More.

*

Jennifer L. Freedʹs collection, When Light Shifts (Kelsay, 2022), was a finalist for the Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize and the Medal Provocateur for poetry, and won second place for the Eric Hoffer Legacy Prize. Her poems appear in Atlanta Review, One Art, Rust and Moth, SWWIM, Vox Populi, What the House Knows, and elsewhere. She writes and teaches in Massachusetts. Please visit Jfreed.weebly.com