Portrait of the Artist as an Old Woman
My sister’s neck is scrunched and her head
lays sideways on her shoulder, as if a Picasso
painting has rearranged her body parts.
Her small hands, splayed and stiff, can no longer
hold her calligraphy pen, though supplies clutter
her desk, waiting for a better day that never
comes.
Her face is caved in where she fell forward out
of her wheelchair, broke the orbital bone;
fearful, she declined the surgery to fix it.
Slumped in her wheelchair at the lunch table,
She opens an eye when I walk in, smiles
a lopsided smile. “This is my baby sister,”
she introduces me to a woman who stares
back blankly, “I am making my peace with this,”
my sister says, tells me she is trying to be a role
model for the other “inmates” she laughs,
corrects herself, “patients.” After a restless
lifetime of addictions, there is no farther to fall.
While she gums the roast beef hero we bring
her, she asks about my children. By three o’clock,
she fades like a radio signal out of range,
I wheel her back to her room,
bend to kiss her cheek, tell her I love her.
The day before I am due to arrive
to take her out for her 75th birthday,
the staff tells us she said good bye
to the other patients, went into her room,
stopped breathing. Did she cry out weakly?
Or did she manage the impossible feat
of saving extra pills in her trembling hand?
Did she simply make up her mind to die?
When I identify the body, there is a ghost
of a smile on the blue veined marble of her face.
**
Published in Paterson Literary Review Fall 2019
My sister’s neck is scrunched and her head
lays sideways on her shoulder, as if a Picasso
painting has rearranged her body parts.
Her small hands, splayed and stiff, can no longer
hold her calligraphy pen, though supplies clutter
her desk, waiting for a better day that never
comes.
Her face is caved in where she fell forward out
of her wheelchair, broke the orbital bone;
fearful, she declined the surgery to fix it.
Slumped in her wheelchair at the lunch table,
She opens an eye when I walk in, smiles
a lopsided smile. “This is my baby sister,”
she introduces me to a woman who stares
back blankly, “I am making my peace with this,”
my sister says, tells me she is trying to be a role
model for the other “inmates” she laughs,
corrects herself, “patients.” After a restless
lifetime of addictions, there is no farther to fall.
While she gums the roast beef hero we bring
her, she asks about my children. By three o’clock,
she fades like a radio signal out of range,
I wheel her back to her room,
bend to kiss her cheek, tell her I love her.
The day before I am due to arrive
to take her out for her 75th birthday,
the staff tells us she said good bye
to the other patients, went into her room,
stopped breathing. Did she cry out weakly?
Or did she manage the impossible feat
of saving extra pills in her trembling hand?
Did she simply make up her mind to die?
When I identify the body, there is a ghost
of a smile on the blue veined marble of her face.
**
Published in Paterson Literary Review Fall 2019