She shows me the tubes running down her
legs, a chuckle takes hold of her as tears
run away. The tulips in the vase sent with no
card, light up the dingy space. I hand her the
fresh bread she requested I bake.
She lifts a bite to her mouth as she wipes her
cheeks on the bed sheets.
I remember those green olives
she ate on that last day,
that last day she was deathly ill.
One by one by one, plucking them out of the briny heap
grasping the jar in her emaciated hand, she claimed
how much she loves green olives.
The sight made me wince a bit, it rattled my mind knowing
this was her request at this time. The sodium on any other
day, would disrupt the heartbeat in an unpleasant way.
Today none of that mattered—
just these tiny olives with no pits, stuffed of course
with that tiny-red-squishy-thing, like the flesh of a minnow.
Minnows are cool though, I collected them in fish bowls when I was a kid
they though, don’t live forever, like I wished she did.
©Jay Mora-Shihadeh
Photo by Antonio Molín on Unsplash
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