When you were in the hospital
I stopped breathing.

Emotions in suspense,
and baffled by the routines of normal life,
recalled but of no consequence now
when all the universe was reduced to
the daily migration between hospital and home,
the rhythm of your breathing,
the pattern of your wakefulness
and the language lessons I studied and restudied
until I knew them by heart:

the roots, derivations and meanings of
fear
loss
love.