Living Just To Find Emotion
My grandmother’s room at night is lonely, the darkness that swallows it quite appropriate. The smell of her perfume and life’s decay hovers among her belongings that lay still and silent. The only present light comes from the moon, which creeps into her bedroom in a sliver between the curtains and falls on the floor next to her bed. Her bed is lonely too, as it lays empty.
My grandmother’s house at night is full of small figures that loom in all the rooms like memories of the lives that used to play and laughter that used to shout. The one life that remains in this house has fallen asleep in an overstuffed armchair. The television is on, the glow of the screen and the hum of the infomercial complimenting her soft breathing. Her hands are folded in her lap like two pieces of tissue paper.
My grandmother’s neighborhood at night is a heartless one. The street deserted, the cars sitting alone and cold in driveways. There is a small breeze that sways the leaves abandoned in the gutters. The windows of houses are closed, their blinds shut like slit eyelids. Phantoms sit in front lawns, waiting to hear that soft breathing.
My grandmother’s town at night sees the deaths of its residences. The lawn phantoms creep into Leisure World and hospitals and old age homes that occupy the streets, looking for others like my grandmother. The soft breathing ceases, as they take the old and dying with them.
My grandmother’s house at night is full of small figures that loom in all the rooms like memories of the lives that used to play and laughter that used to shout. The one life that remains in this house has fallen asleep in an overstuffed armchair. The television is on, the glow of the screen and the hum of the infomercial complimenting her soft breathing. Her hands are folded in her lap like two pieces of tissue paper.
My grandmother’s neighborhood at night is a heartless one. The street deserted, the cars sitting alone and cold in driveways. There is a small breeze that sways the leaves abandoned in the gutters. The windows of houses are closed, their blinds shut like slit eyelids. Phantoms sit in front lawns, waiting to hear that soft breathing.
My grandmother’s town at night sees the deaths of its residences. The lawn phantoms creep into Leisure World and hospitals and old age homes that occupy the streets, looking for others like my grandmother. The soft breathing ceases, as they take the old and dying with them.