Winner

poetic prose memoir

Pops in the army in World War II. He’s the mustached man.

Now when I talk about my mornings

I have only three hours of rituals to report

A yoga routine I learned from a blonde Australian lady on YouTube

And a vitamin taking, meditating, contemplating, list making, coffee drinking, Pops visiting, song singing, oh what a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful day ritual

When I was in the army I meant something

I tell Pops he still means something to me

When I ask how he’s feeling he says, Not bad, not bad

But he keeps falling and forgetting and crinkling his words, and mish-moshing his memories and pickling the moment

And thinking I’m his sister

But only sometimes

I open a window in his room and he’s confused, what’s going on?

I tell him it’s tuesday, 11:30 in the morning and the sun is shining

This satisfies him. I know it would satisfy him if I said that on a Friday at 4pm during a thunderstorm

But I don’t let that bother me too much

If I ever get to be 102 I will have a robot bestie who will make sure to catch me before I hit the ground

We will talk and laugh and maybe feel something like love

It will work out much better than it did for Joaquin Phoenix in the movie Her

Because my robot will be smitten with me

Afterall, we’ve come a long way since that movie came out

Haim visits Pops every Sunday now that he’s retired

Richard broke his hip, Janice lost her head, and Brian is dead

A lady I don’t know well tells me that I’m at that age now

These things will keep happening: retiring, breaking, falling, dying

She wants to tell me about her rheumatoid arthritis

But I don’t much enjoy the topic of rheumatoid arthritis, so I pretend to take a very important phone call to avoid talking about rheumatoid arthritis, and because she doesn’t know me well, she doesn’t know that this is obviously a lie, because I would rather spoon with a rattlesnake than answer a phone call

I wheel Pops down to the dining room and

even though everyone at his assisted living place loves him,

He only ever sits alone and talks to no one

But some of them have heard Peter and me act out his plays during the writing group

And they think Pops is a great writer

You are a great writer

It’s his favorite compliment, and I get it, believe you me I get it. So I serve it to him often

I hate it when he feels bad about feeling bad and when he tells me he is not the sort of guy to be on the floor and that he hasn’t had dinner when he has had dinner and that’s it’s not right and something should be done about it all and what can we do and why is this happening and I want to take him to Moonshadows in Malibu and afterwards we can put our feet in the ocean and we can talk about how beautiful the ocean is and how mom loved it too and how that was one thing they had in common besides me but I can’t because Moonshadows burned down in the fires and I can’t get him into the car anymore

Am I really the oldest one here, he asks?

Yeah, pops. Isn’t that great? You won! What do you think of that?

Not bad, not bad

I leave him there at the table, wondering if those will be the last words I ever hear him say

If so…

Not bad, not bad