In an Amber Dome

I’m reading Schlachthof Funf beside Eleanor

and I skim over the words,

“How did I get so old?”

imagine them in her caramel voice

between thick, choking coughs,

wondering how the fits grew

unchecked for so long. I hoped

to make sugar biscuits with her,

collect the memory in creamy blond

dreams. Take pale goldenrod dough

from her hand shrunk against her veins.

But papa reigns over her kitchen now,

baking sheets left out for two months

cool and empty on the stovetop.  

I leave a note about love in the margins,

a small ore of truth

for her to find as her mind slips

between the typeset, tangles

chapters up like old necklaces

she once costumed me in.

You’ve come unstuck in time, Eleanor.

Such a brilliant mind waning                                                                                                                                             

in a decade of disrepair,

and she hardly reads anymore.

But maybe she’ll find my note,

cradle the page like a precious thing,

and think of me, of my solid hand

in hers.