A Way of Life
To move about the kitchen
while he sat for days
looking at the floor.
Both of them somber—
he with the pale look
in dark thoughts,
she with resignation
and a bit of here we go again.
No one spoke the word, a single word
or tried to fix him with a pill.
Did they even know the word?
Sometimes the family thought
they could repair him,
find a tool to adjust his state of mind—
oil a rusty connection,
weld a broken part.
TV is her only companion
to fill the evening silence,
a deserted forest where a tree never fell.
She knew his smile and jokes
would eventually return
but she hated waiting
for the ice to thaw,
the sun to rise,
the sky to clear.
Listen
She wanted to stay
in small town South Dakota
in her large main street house
with its stairs everywhere.
She wanted to build a ramp
to make it easier to keep her life
of birthday club and coffee
with the girls at Boomer’s Cafe.
But we did not listen. We knew better —
with our images of her
falling down the stairs
or in the bathroom,
cane or walker tumbling
like drunks at the Polka Dot Bar.
She did not want to leave
but we made her.
So at the end,
when we had not listened once again,
we moved her to a safer place
just up Williston Road from me.
But fear moved in as well,
asked to be her roommate.
About the Poet
Janice is a poet who lives and writes in the desert of Tucson, Arizona, and on a lake in Wisconsin. She has degrees in English and Communication Disorders; spent her career as a speech pathologist. Janice’s poems have been published or are forthcoming in Gyroscope Review, Bethlehem Writers Roundtable, Mojave River Review, Caesura, and The Remembered Arts Journal among others.
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