Wax

You yellow as you fade,

     lips the color of the candles

          now unlit beside our bed

               (mood lighting).

I offer words you'd say

     if your voice had not been stolen

          by tubes and wires, but I show them

               a stranger.

They cannot carve your spirit

     to the shape that they remember,

          while I stand with you as witness, cold

               and brittle.

I wait until they rule against me,

     leave to let me serve my sentence,

          to hold your waxen fingertips

              and melt.