Tzivia Gover

If this was the gateway to heaven

then her bed was a ladder
laid down on its back

that pillow, the stone where she settled her head
and she was the traveler, weary.

And if so, this room (on the stark sterile hallway
guarded with a lock on the door and the nurses of doom)

was a crater filling with light
as her breath emptied out

and the whole damn room, you could say, was dreaming
those angels, all a-feather

pulling and lifting in the fluorescent-lit
heaven. Up and down, up and down, and usher her out

as I sat on the lip of the bed letting her go
through the ceiling, the roof, past the half-smiling

moon. When we rolled her in, mere weeks before
all out of hope, this ward was a well-disguised hell.

But God, I now saw, was in this place all along,
and I, I did not know.

Tzivia Gover is the author of Dreaming on the Page: Tap into Your Midnight Mind to Supercharge Your Writing and several other books. Her poetry and essays have been widely published, including in The New York Times, Pensive, The Other Journal, Mom Egg Review, and many more. She lives in western Massachusetts where she teaches courses online and in-person about combining dreams and writing. Learn more at www.thirdhousemoon.com