Snowflake

I was thinking about the whole nursing home situation (just the general though of what it would be like to live at one) and I just kind of spontaneously wrote this poem/performance piece. I tried to give the issue a rather positive outlook, so this is a p

I like the nickname 'Snowflake' better, he says jokingly, staring at her hair. It's more pristine. Oh, I'm so pristine, she responds vicious and sarcastically. You are, he pauses, You're just too old and dense to realize it. Both laugh as if they were sixty pensive, withered years younger.

The orderly interrupts, Lunch is over. She ushers them out of the room. Out in the hallway they continue laughing as they hide their meds in the plants potted soil, and for the rest of the day she insults him; him and his failing body. He feigns insecure, then he just smiles real big.

 

She could never tell when he was joking.

Snow, snow, come on down.

In the air, and on the ground.

At dinner they talk about breakfast, and how it always happens too early for them. The others fear death so, they don't know how to sleep in anymore. Moreover, the others here with them have never really been alive at all. And this makes their meeting this morning both more maddening and more meaningful. Being a decade older, he gets to play the role of the guru. Fearing imbalance, she caves in and asks, What is it exactly that I do for you?

You do what the cunning does for the fox, the howl for the wolves. You do what the buckshot does to the bucks. Lengthy lashes and all.

I'm not afraid.

The comatose are wrapped in sheets just like corpses. It's late at night but even still they hear the nurses voices. Climbing the stairs, a clutching of hands so warm, so warm. They burst out on the roof, under the moon, triggering the alarm.

Naked as newborns, flurries all 'round.

 

They leap like the snow did, and fall to the ground.

Naked as newborns, flurries all 'round.
They leap like the snow did, and fall to the ground.

Reviews

[Red Brick Keshner]

Ahem... very moving even from a veneer of lightness and positivity. Maybe too, it's because at the beginning of the year I had a short period of mulling over a possible future at a nursing home -- many years to come still but coming anyway with inevitability. Thanks for sharing this one.