Days before she died
my mother stood in line,
took a picture for a passport—
unaware of the apparition
in her blood,
the water from the window
she would never see.
Days before she died,
my mother planned
to fly—
Stacy Nigliazzo is one of Pulse’s two poetry editors. She proudly serves the Houston community as an emergency-department nurse and is the award-winning author of Scissored Moon and Sky the Oar. Her poems have appeared in Pulse, Bellevue Literary Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, JAMA and elsewhere.
“In 2003 my mother was planning a trip overseas with her girlfriends. Shortly after she received her passport in the mail–her very first passport, at the age of fifty-two–she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. She died a few weeks later. This poem honors the journeys we all must take in life; those that are planned, those that are unexpected and those that are inevitable.”
© 2022 Pulse - Voices from the Heart of Medicine, Inc. All rights reserved.
6 thoughts on “Blue Book”
Stacy –
This poem’s form is perfect. We experience the shock this way – find ourselves taking these needed breaths along with you. Wonderful poem Stacy.
this is a fantastic poem. Very beautifully stylized and formatted. The last lines are fabulous! So heartbreaking and real.
Perfect and evoking memories!
A beautiful poem that reminds us of the final journey we each have to make…
Beautiful and haunting – the words and the form.
Oh my….this poem evokes so many things… touches the loss in everyone who’s lost someone in that unexpected way…even its fragmented form. Its first line should be a poetry prompt. What you wrote, Stacy, in “About the poem” – especially the last sentence, is every bit as eloquent as the poem itself. Well done.