You once told me how God picks the most beautiful flowers in a garden and that humans only pick the ripest fruits and that developers only build on the most wild untamed places with an abundance of life.

Sickness is like a weed, and no matter how much I tend to your garden, 

I cannot seem to root it out.

Dandelions are blown into the wind and I can do nothing but watch as they take another piece of your strength, fading, fading, until there is nothing left.

When I play the role of a prodigal child, forever failing at the search for a cure, 

there are always flowers on the windowsill and dinner cooking on the stove.

I try to remember you as you are on this summer night, full of energy and light.

I try to remember everything that you have given me that I will never repay:

The courage to dance to nothing but the jukebox in your soul, the recipe for meringue cookies, the strength to live, the permission to drive your car, my genealogy, the undying belief that tomorrow would be better, 

despite the knowledge that you might never get better. 

Please take my word before you go, because I have nothing else to give you. 

Tomorrow, I swear you will be proud of me. 

Tomorrow, I will wash my sheets and do the dishes

Tomorrow, I swear I will be better and 

I will pour endless amounts of water onto the backyard plants and

I will find a way to root out the weeds so that

you can have as many cups of iced tea on the porch as you want. 

Tomorrow every star will be replaced with another strawberry for me to cut into pieces and 

every Saturday morning will be a prayer for forgiveness 

for all the ways I have failed you.

For you I will do anything, and I will fail at everything. 

I will learn and I will be better and 

Tomorrow, I will be less of a burden.

Tomorrow, I will make up for what you have given me,

I will beg to help you, and the verdict of the gods will be deafening: 

You cannot make up for a lifetime of receiving,

we will not grant you more time.

So tonight, I will allow myself to dream that I make it in time and you do not get hurt and 

I do not watch from the cliff as you plummet towards the unmarked grave 

that you bought out in your name when the doctors started the hourglass.

Tonight, when the broken clock is right for the second time,

I do not fail you in the millions of ways that I failed myself, 

you don’t have to save me this time.

Before I wake up and before fate rides in on the sunrise to take you for your final dance and before God picks the most beautiful flowers, 

tell me again how thousands of overripe berries grew over your grave and tell me again how I missed the service and 

how the river and I made amends to clean sheets that you never came home to.

Yellow flower, please tell me again that you are still here, 

because I have been searching for you for as long as I can remember.