Sherry Chandler

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Sonnenizio on a Line from Moira Egan

You watch your heart beat. You've grown so thin,
your skin so thin, translucent on your temple,
so thready thin the visible pulse, the thread
so thin that binds you to this life.
Thin the skin on the backs of your hands, blotchy
with liver spots and blood-thinner bruises,
veins a relief map of your thinning will,
thin the beat you watch at the base of your palm.

Now you're five years gone, my sense of you grown thin
as smoke from a dying fire, thin as Kodak
paper, thin as plastic sheets preserving
old snapshots, thin as a young mother in sepia tones,
thin as the skin of my hands, vein-mapped, age–
spotted, thin as the ink I lay on this page.

Sherry Chandler has published two books of poetry, The Woodcarver's Wife and Weaving a New Eden. Her poems have appeared in many anthologies and magazines, including The South Carolina Review, The Louisville Review, and Qarrtsiluni.