art

Daily diminishing

She’s crumbling,
Like the walls of her adobe home
That each day cede something of their strength,
Dried mud flaking to the floor, she sweeps it up
And into a dustpan, tosses it over her shoulder
And makes a wish, grinding it back into the floor.
It will take a century to fall, yet her home is daily diminishing.
Her skin sloughs off
With the pages of the calendar.
She’s losing pieces of herself.
Hair, fingernails, memories.
There it goes, a mote in the sun:
The memory of her mom’s spiderwort.
Another wisp: The sound of a red-winged blackbird.
She’s at peace with what’s left, fewer names to recall.
She once went to Paris and ate soupe à l’oignon,
Thrown together by a withered cook with a deft hand.
She reads this in her diary, her handwriting unrecognizable,
But the smell of the pages holds her.
It is no longer hers, this memory.
But she has an onion, a stick of butter
A brick of cheese and champagne.
She may not remember Paris,
But she understands the onion,
Holds it long in her hand before
Peeling its dried brown skin,
Letting it fall to the floor.