Waiting

Touch: The Journal of Healing

Waiting

by Jodi Hottel

All these years

I’ve been waiting

for you to talk to me, stop

changing the subject,

scurrying off to get clothes

from the dryer, handing me

the frayed dust rag

and my orders. Maybe

you never realized –

maybe I never realized –

I wanted to take

your chapped hands

out of the dishwater,

let them nest in mine,

cease their flitting and flying

while I listened.

Now you are prisoner

of crumbling bone,

sagging flesh, gagged

by your own tongue,

in a twilight of phantom cats,

old beaus, blowing sand.

You hear your mother's slippers

shuffle, smell steamed rice

and salty, sour pickles.

Time now to

rest your hands in mine.

Jodi L. Hottel is a writer and retired English teacher, living in Santa Rosa, CA. Her work has been published in the English Journal, The Dickens, Frogpond and anthologies from the University of Iowa Press, Tebot Bach, and the Healdsburg Arts Council.