Changed memories

the most painful walk

was not one I had to make.

watching someone die

makes one wish for death.

who are you? my grandmother

asks the ladies in white.

she turns her head away

from them, but the nurses come./

“ouch,” she says when the blood pressure

cuff wraps onto her bicep.

I think about my Aunt Ida

the woman who would roam

the Seelbach Hotel.

did the chandelier in the dining room

rattle as she glided from the ballroom

into the foyer? did her lacy nightgown float

behind her as she announced her entrance?

the women in my family remember every detail

every person they encounter, every smell,

emotion, book, every memory,

until our brains give up,

halt like a train making its final stop

on a cross country trip.

the end comes but

it doesn’t finish swiftly.

how to know what

the right story is?

I was a cook! we say, proudly,

like a child who has just grasped

the beauty of language.

no, a husband says, you

made forgettable chicken.

oh, a gardener, then!

look at these callouses.

no, a daughter says,

you killed even a

basil plant.

questions float above us,

we look down at our hands,

there are clues in our weathered skin,

but we never know which is the changed

memory.

Published in Harmony Magazine