Part I: Remain Silent

sitting at a covered coffee table
 together with three other women
 like draped dolls | protected
 by the pram | they
  don´t talk | don´t look | don´t laugh

 Hello auntie | my words
 intersect the #silence

 like wafts of mists | the smell of
 disinfectant | coffe | and excrements
 passes through the room | no sight
 of a nurse or an assistant | my eyes
 find hold at the cup | nobody can
 lead it to the own mouth | except me

 sitting here for so many years
 without complaining | a single word
 embarrassed | I take the cup in my hand
 the coffee has long cooled | because
 you don´t look at me | I grab your hand
 I’m uncomfortable |so much #stillness

 the hand is warm—but without life
 no twitching | no pulling | no re-acting
 with this hand, you can do what ever you want
   put it on the side arms of the doll´s chair
   fold it for praying into each other
   pull it on the thighs
 no care | what happens to the body

 I take farewell | although she is not dead yet
 the body here | the soul vanished for the most part

 on the graveyard oft he living | five women
 are sitting at the covered coffee table
 every wheelchair | shelter and imprisonment
 everything within reach but unattainable yet
 there is nothing left to say | so
 we remain silent |

Part II: Misery, a Promise

 the body |swallowed by the bed
 the eyes | straight vorward to the door
 as if you would wait | for a very long
 time for someone | that doesn´t come
 now I am here

 the hair | a practical short hair cut
 gray | smooth | and heavily combed back
 everything perfectly | arranged
 you lay there in self-embrace
 the age-spotted left hand | holding
 the right shoulder

 buried | the domicile of spirit
 dilapidated the home | body
 I have to remember | that you
 are | you were once
 with a clear mind and a sharpened tongue

   #sister
    ## need to go to the loo
 the emergency call of a resident | shouts
 through the house | like the nurse in the hallway
     ###busy right now

 misery is a promise | here

 unexpectedly you turn your head | rusty
 open your eyes and speak | for a split
 second | with toneless voice | the name of
 my mother
 and again | you fall behind | to yourself |

 on the way home | accompanies me | the
 smell of excrements |

Part III: The Death Has Unlocked Himself

 your glance | caught in himself
 the dying of the past | not enough for #fate

 the wall holds onto | the good of yesterday
 the photos of the loved ones on the left
 at that time | three sisters, one brother
 the man who | soon left the wife | as a widow
 the daughter whose dying only became
 bearable | by forgetting

 how it all fades away…
   #love
   #dignity
   #life
 the death sentence spoken | but
 not fully enforced

 the time hums a funeral singsong | in every
 melody resonates solace | So I sing for you
 songs of the old ones | full of #melancholia

 and indeed | nostalgia wakes you | up
 from self-sinking
 on your right side | flashes a tiny raising
 of an | ironical smile
 almost imperceptibly | your hand presses itself
 against my | Let it go at that, child!

 fate continues to work on | receiving the
 transience | the death has
 unlocked himself |