sometimes i went with my mother to work
night duty at the old-age home in town
trailing quiet shadow behind her
on the evening round
out to the rooms and through frail care.
there was a woman there
i don’t know her name,
they were all mr and mrs somebody
to a seven year old me,
she was insubstantial
not much more than folds
in her blankets and skin –
but her eyes were alive in that dim quiet room.
she called me over to – beckoning
with long wrists long fingers –
folding my child’s hand in her bones.
at ninety she was the oldest person
i had ever seen and she almost scared me
with those cheekbones and eyebrows and
lank hair that she stuck in wisps
behind her ear.
she said she made it for me
and lifted her hand revealing
a small piece of paper
not quite bookmark size
twining vines with buds and blooms
shaping letters, spelling my name,
i never knew she knew.
i remember, she said,
being your age like it was yesterday –
it still feels the same, she said
meeting my eyes
and for a moment i was not child
and she was not old woman –
we just were.
it is just the body that gets tired, she said
turning those grey eyes toward the drawn curtains
last light of day a gold line across the room.
and then she smiled
craggy and almost broken
and patted my hand with
those bone fingers once more,
asked me to remember her
and of course i do.
like it was yesterday
it still feels same
being rendered visible
where we thought we were
unseen.
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