I was new at it
and you were dying.  Right on the cusp
of new treatments, but too late coming.  The second cancers
already lodged in the intricate network of channels and drains,
overtaxing the sump pump of your failing body.

It was late and your many visitors
gone, I sat next to your bed, chair pulled up to the edge.
You reached for my hand. Waxy, white.
You started to cry. You won’t be alone I said. I lost you then because you knew
I was lying.  Of course, I’ll be alone!  you snapped
like my brain was a soft cantaloupe.  I had no words

the day you died
I found your room, changed.  Your friends, artists
atheists, and mystics, all, had covered the crucifix on the wall with a washcloth,
moved your bed, unlocked the stubborn wheels, reordered the space
so it all faced East, auspicious
morning light flooding your face, your body
turned like a needle, the shadow
of a sundial.  Your hair caught fire.

Virginia LeBaron is faculty at the University of Virginia School of Nursing and her writing is shaped, in part, by her clinical experiences as an oncology and palliative care nurse. She has published one chapbook (Cardinal Marks, Finishing Line Press) and her work has been supported by a residency with the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Lighthouse Studio Poetry Collective. She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Jennifer Packer received her BFA from the Tyler School of Art in 2007 and her MFA from Yale University in 2012. She was a 2012-2013 Artist-in-Residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem and a Visual Arts Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA, from 2014- 2016. Her work was most recently featured in two major solo exhibitions: The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing, a 10-year survey at the Serpentine Galleries in London and Whitney Museum of American Art, and Every Shut Eye Ain’t Sleep at LA MOCA. Her first solo institutional exhibition, Tenderheaded, was shown at the Renaissance Society in Chicago in 2017 and at the Rose Museum at Brandeis University. Her work was included in the 2019 Whitney Biennial and P.5 - Prospect New Orleans (2021).