Hello writers and readers! Here is another poem from Crossroads III to welcome you back from the Holidays. Marie recently read her poem at the Paramount, so if you missed that event, read on! Thank you Marie!
Our Fading Wonderings
Marie Ungar
Wrinkled hands
caress smooth, colored paper
over uniform blue sheets,
folding, unfolding.
Old eyes
searching for solace
in the meticulous scribbles of
three words, painstakingly written
again and again over ninety-seven years
so they are engraved on all the loneliest
walls of her mind.
Weary thoughts break a leak and
the memories come
pouring, unbidden,
of not so long ago
when they left her, smiling
with small hands and full faces
and tight hugs around the knees
that made her teeter
but laugh just the same.
To think they didn’t even know
it would be the last time
that he gave her his wide
blue gaze; she her
harmless words—
they’d miss her, they said,
as they boarded the plane.
How much? she wonders now.
How much?
It was not so long ago
she watched from the doorstep,
fretting over sandwiches and veggies
and brown paper bags.
Hair a little blacker,
back a little straighter,
she waved in farewell
as the bus pulled away.
Through the darkened window
young lips formed the words—
I’ll miss you, they said,
excited and nervous.
Looking back, she wonders:
How much?
Not so long ago
she was that little girl herself
who didn’t even contemplate
what it would be like
to fade.
The moving van next door
of the utmost significance—
oh, how they sobbed
over braiding hair and
packing boxes.
I’ll miss you; they hugged
after laughing and crying
and she never stopped to wonder:
How much?
She searches and searches
in the large, inked letters
so familiar yet foreign
written miles away.
Life is so beautifully
redundant it hurts,
yet in the end it refuses to answer your questions.
The heart rate monitor beeps.
The clock ticks loudly.
With effort she loosens wrinkled,
arthritic hands,
letting go—
you’d think she might be good at it, now.
beepbeep
The card
falls to her lap.
We miss you, she reads.
beepbeepbeep
But how much?
A punctuated pause;
she closes her eyes.
The final fluctuation;
she wonders.