After learning you have one year, give or take,
to live, we go for burgers—it is not yet 
the last burger you will ever taste. And the walk
around the cul-de-sac
is not the last time we will admire 
the black tree raised like a fist
against a wide-open autumn sky.

Nor do we speak in firsts: 
first thought after the words. First peek 
at the calendar, calculating.

In fact we cannot speak at all, pilgrim 
our way to the craft store instead
and stock your cabinets with yarn enough
for a hundred lives: great balls of it, masses,
small clouds billowing, lawns of it,
soft knots of it, fleshy some of it,
coarse and rough some. One day
I will find these skeins unused
and gather them to me like children.
I will name them what they might have been:
Sweater. Scarf. Cowl. Blanket. Mitten.
I will not think of them
as first or last or even if. 
It will just be a sort of yes, 
you were here. For a while
you lived.