Because you’re dying I forgive you
the finger on the nurse’s wrist
which follows her veins upstream;
away from the cancer, eating your liver.
Because you also forgive death
by skimming the pulse of the living, searching
for what you do not have. I understand now
more of what it means to be human. How the body continues
to desire---and I want it to stay, this animal
called hunger, for it means
we are both still alive.