In This Room

by e. ryann roth

visitors come to gaze at her in her confinement from behind plastic bed rails. She, a spectre of her former self, the lioness that roamed the mountain roads in search of God and blueberries, rummaged thrift store bag sales for forgotten treasures, walked barefoot in the grass to clip a red dahlia for her hair.

She drank wine on the beach as the sun set, she screamed at her children in anger and, later, hugged their necks too tight, just so she could smell them and feel the fine texture of their hair against her cheek.

Laundry meandered lazily in mole hills along the floor and socks went unsorted because she’d rather play a board game, take a road trip, choreograph a family dance routine, or inhale a seasoned chicken sandwich with crisp waffle fries and extra pickles from the Chik-fil-A across town.

And now she is in this room caged with greeting cards and children’s drawings, in this single bed, in a bleary fog of morphine, in too much pain to lie beside her husband in pleasure, only permitted, through an open window, a kiss of wild wafting air on her sweaty forehead and the matted hair gone quickly gray.

I hold her fragile hand in mine, silent fears trickling down the stones of my cheeks like mountain streams.

I tell her I love her and that it’s selfish of me wanting her to stay and I tell her

it’s okay to go.

But it’s a lie.