How often you’ve reminded me
that you used to change my diapers.
Sometimes I remind you
that now I change yours.
When I’m weary or upset
at barking commands
you cannot help but make,
I take deep breaths and hum,
counting on your bum ear
not to hear. But it does.
Stop that humming! you snap,
half-joking. I have watched
your world shrink to the width
of your body between rails
of a hospital bed. I have been
sad and frightened for you,
for me. Sister, time steals our strength,
but still we go on, one day bleeding
into the next. I never meant
to feel broken. I hope you never
meant to break. It is an hour
before midnight. You call my phone.
I don’t answer. Outside I hear
the mad rhythms of the rain.
The earth is tired of all of us.
No wonder rain pounds. No
wonder the air we breathe and never
think of whistles and hums.
Jo Angela Edwins has published poems in over 100 journals and anthologies, including recently or forthcoming in The Hollins Critic, Pirene's Fountain, ONE ART, and Hamilton Stone Review. Her chapbook Play was published in 2016 by Finishing Line Press, and her collection A Dangerous Heaven is now out from Gnashing Teeth Publishing. She has received awards from Winning Writers, Poetry Super Highway, and the SC Academy of Authors and is a Pushcart Prize, Forward Prize, and Bettering American Poetry nominee. She lives in Florence, SC, where she serves as the first poet laureate of the Pee Dee region of South Carolina