WHEN MEMORY GOES FROM THE HANDS
by Sarah Carey
They pass the silver, the ruby and the golden
anniversaries without comment
like a bowl of peas
while we wait
time zones away, like we always did,
to be told. Children, this is a milestone.
Celebrate. They grow old
with wounds that won’t be dressed
by hands that, having once memorized
a lover’s entire geography
can’t place the fester. Which foot,
one asks the other. Which toe?
When memory goes from the hands
we are on our way out of this world,
I tell young girls who ask me for advice.
This is what happens —give and take—
capitulation being a shadow of compromise.
The girls think I’ve lost my mind
but I face the future cold
braced to forget my husband’s rock-hard calves,
his clean-shaven face against my cheek
when we make love.
In his small apartment, my father
can be anyplace. He conjures gondolas
in Venice, the Duomo in Florence.
His day fades early; he forgets why.
A flashback of some holiday captures of all of us
at table: someone ready to carve,
another to pray. We hold hands. On tiptoe,
my stepmother forks the cake
in the oven for doneness.
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