There is no time here

your illness a kind of solvent

dissolving the future a little at a time

—Mark Doty

No time here

is what I was trying to say

when they said it's a metaphor

for death — no,

no time simply suggests

time's stopped and she is stuck

in her disease, a fly in honey.

There is no time here but

the bananas sitting still

on the table are rotting.

The dead have only the past

to oer. There is no time here

to brood over the rotting bananas,

let them water. I do not mean

they rot like esh. Flesh rots

when the body is untended.

And no, the bananas rot

not like cancer rots the lungs

but like leaves that burn from green

to yellow to dust. There is no time here

but time was once here

and time has a monopoly

over the bananas, and all else.

And no, not the way cancer

monopolizes your cells. No,

do not assume my grandmother

has cancer. I am trying to say

there is no time here

and her eyes are blinking

like stars in a river on a clear night,

slow, slow, and not slow like time

but slow like death walking

towards the dying. You are

forgetting there is no time

here and nobody is dying.

I look at Dida

and no, no, her hands

are not green

turning yellow

to dust.