It’s not about who made the mistake

with the wrong address in the GPS getting

us to Brooklyn an hour late, is it?

It’s about your retirement and our finances,

and a 20-something living in our house

without employment but with a car payment.

It’s about the four scrapings the dermatologist did

this summer to determine if I have another

basal cell carcinoma.

It’s about the arthritis that’s making my fingers achy

and your neck pain from past injuries stealing

your sleep and making you cranky.

It’s about the rising prices on the three bedroom houses

with a view of the Blue Ridge Mountains we’ve been dreaming

about since ‘19.

It’s about Sandy who we visited Wednesday at the assisted living

facility and her forgetting the names of her grandchildren

because of that nefarious bitch, Dementia.

Getting off the elevator to see her, we were hit with the thick odor

of overripe flesh, like forgotten Georgia peaches adrift on scorched

Southern grass in August.

She was lining the hallway of patients in front of the nurse’s station,

a parade of motionless commuters waiting for a train never coming,

together simmering

in a fragrant stew of steaming blankness, backs to the wall,

heads lolling forward onto their avian chests.

But I digress.

Arguing about who did what is a distraction, yes? Blaming

and projecting emotions like anger are easier to manage

than our current circumstances.

If we end up like this, let’s promise to go to the home together

and sit next to each other touching elbows in our matching

sweatpants with elastic bands as I misdirect

your attention again by shouting Look at that! While giggling

and pointing to the left in order to snatch another fry from your

unbreakable plate and you happily letting me do it.

————————————–

Maureen Martinez called us from Bronx, NY.

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