what burns me now?

by Mark Doty

Maggie’s taking care of a man who’s dying; he’s attended to everything, said goodbye to his parents,

paid off his credit card. She says Why don’t you just run it up to the limit?

but he wants everything squared away, no balance owed, though he misses the pets

he’s already found a home for — he can’t be around dogs or cats, too much risk. He says,

I can’t have anything. She says, A bowl of goldfish? He says he doesn’t want to start

with anything and then describes the kind he’d maybe like, how their tails would fan

to a gold flaring. They talk about hot jewel tones, gold lacquer, say maybe

they’ll go pick some out though he can’t go much of anywhere and then abruptly he says I can’t love

anything I can’t finish. He says it like he’s had enough of the whole scintillant world,

though what he means is he’ll never be satisfied and therefore has established this discipline,

a kind of severe rehearsal. That’s where they leave it, him looking out the window,

her knitting as she does because she needs to do something. Later he leaves a message:

Yes to the bowl of goldfish. Meaning: let me go, if I have to, in brilliance. In a story I read,

a Zen master who’d perfected his detachment from the things of the world remembered, at the moment of dying,

a deer he used to feed in the park, and wondered who might care for it, and at that instant was reborn

in the stunned flesh of a fawn. So, Maggie’s friend — Is he going out

Into the last loved object Of his attention? Fanning the veined translucence

Of an opulent tail, Undulant in some uncapturable curve Is he bronze chrysanthemums,