I lie her on a mat on the floor of my tiny medical room and try to coax her to drink rehydration salts.
I lay with her, holding her shallow breaths and jerking pangs of grief.
I tried to take the dress from her so I could lay her out on the floor, sure she was having some sort of attack.
I lay out her clothes, I do her hair, I even help her put Nair on her legs (last time, while rinsing her legs, Nair-splatter left me with several small bald patches the things we do for love).
I lay with her sleeping on my bare skin, letting her feel the warmth of my body, the beating of my heart, and the strength of my spirit.
In "My Life," a wry ages-of-man poem that appeared in Strand's 1970 collection "Darker," the poet starts life as his mother's doll (" 'Talk, talk,' she would beg"), only to become his wife's volume of Kierkegaard ("My wife took me down from the shelf. / I lay in her arms.
As I lay on her table, listening to relaxing reed instruments and looking more akin to a porcupine than myself, I can't help but think about the movie Man on the Moon, starring Jim Carrey as Andy Kaufman.
I want to lay her off, likening my situation to her having a medical emergency that renders her unable to work.
At night I lay next to her, sleepless, staring at the pulse bobbing in the cove of her throat, my own heart pounding to this steady yet uncertain rhythm.
