Sundowners
by Sandra L. Faulkner
My mother fell down a hole into the past, so the Crone took her legs to color in the white of arthritis. Her limbs branch out and root into a different timeline. All of her leaves have fallen off and crumbled into the dust of memory. She can’t unetch, undo, and scrape off the lines that spread in crystal shadows across her face, but she can see the secret cats that roam the hallways in the hospital. She wonders why the workers outside can cut grass in a parking lot, how she went to the ER and woke up in her living room. My mother tells the doctor that I’m her wife Grace, as if a daughter can turn into someone better. Only she can see in this delirium how fog makes the magic in the world manifest.
Sandra L. Faulkner is Professor of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University where she writes, teaches, and researches about close relationships. Faulkner lives with her partner, their warrior girl, and three rescue mutts. Faulkner’s poetry appears in places like Writer’s Resist, Literary Mama, Ithaca Lit, and Gulf Stream. https://www.sandrafaulkner.online/