Contemplating life being over
in the panic weeks as the triage of the ill
sorted the ones like me to die . . . I accepted
being passed by: I’ve had my pomegranate life.
Seeds sluicing red . . . Rose affection.
Vermilion dread. The juice: friends of fifty years,
you in your sweatpants and virus mask.
Crisp gold type on a matte-black folder.
Like 81 percent of those over
the age of seventy-two, I have one:
will. Just one vowel away from being well,
as we are now. But today my task is the codicil
that designates the little stuff: a paperweight; a watercolour;
six leather volumes of Mrs. Delany’s letters,
typed in a .docx to send to Wills and Trusts
so a healthy stranger, young and un-
known to me now, will see to what she must.
Molly Peacock is the author of Flower Diary: In Which Mary Hiester Reid Paints, Travels, Marries & Opens a Door as well as seven volumes of poetry, including The Analyst: Poems.
