Osiris, Crossing, and: Where My Father Returns to Visit My Mother as a Crow

Osiris, Crossing

Climb in this bed with me—it is much cooler on this side of the river,My father says, as if the hospital bed he has lied onfor days is now a boat, as if we are crossing the Nileand he is Osiris. He and I both standin this boat, gliding on the surfaceto the mouth of the underworld.It's hot, he says. Aren't you?Climb in here with me. It's cooler.I use the open hospital gownand fan the flames off, but the heatis already in a place I cannot see,in his head, under the scalp,and yet I keep fanning until he says,ça va, c'est bon, until he has arrived,although I don't know it yet, into a gardenof wide mango trees and papaya,into the pooled water of rice paddiesand ceibas, where the ylang-ylangsheds fragrance off the hem of night's skirt,and he is already in the shade.

Where My Father Returns to Visit My Mother as a Crow

The nurse is disconnecting the pump from my mother's port.I lift my eyes to the window just in time to see my father on the sill,his feathers as black as his eyes, blue black. Behind him,the palm fronds flirt with a blue March sky.Look, I say. A raven. The nurse says oh, what?I say, a crow! And before we can debate the difference between ravensand crows, she brings up a woodpecker. My mother chews ginger candy.The bird considers what remains of her balding head, the hair fineand wispy, her skin a yellow parchment. Woodpeckers tap at the windowsometimes, the nurse says. But what do they have to do with anything,what with all their incessant drilling and tapping, their obsession with food?My mother spits out the ginger candy. I wrap it in paper, an offeringto no god. I know better, I think, and watch my father fly off outside,as quickly as he'd arrived, and land nearby, patiently waiting.