Bedroom at the End of the World

“Bedroom at the End of the World” by Desirée Alvarez is the first runner-up of the 2024 Love & Eros Prize, selected by John Lee Clark. We’re honored to share this emotional poem with you.

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How close I am to her now, she who was closed.

Her neck, did I rub her neck?
Yes, I recall I did.

Dark pools fill her eyes wide.
She clings to the bed sheets, saying

we had a good time for a long time, didn’t we?

Her arm soft as a babe
where it swells from blood clot.

I do not want to let go of my mother.

For three weeks I watch geese at sunset
outside the hospital window, bellies lit orange

flying above the row of cypress trees.
At the hour of mauve nurse brings

the loud dragon machine to fill mom’s
lungs with boxed air.

Her breathing strange, sleeping beside me.
It rattles inside my words as I write.

I spread lotion along arthritic knuckles,
coax open fingers clenched for thirty years.

No longer holding paintbrushes,
no longer making my world.

She lets me stroke her feet and shoulders
into the night, into the end.

A raven flaps inside mom with wild black eyes.
She travels to a place more beautiful than the word dark.

I am left here combing her hair.