Unwelcome Guest

Johanna Evans

She likes to pretend it’ll go away, like it did twice before.

It’s simply a visitor overstaying their welcome.

Making messes that she’s too tired to clean

and keeping her awake with music that’s just a little too loud.

Her limbs are becoming as thin and white as the shag carpeting

she stumbles over on every trek to the bathroom.

For someone so frail, her grip is still tight as we lead her

from the bed to the toilet, then the toilet

to the couch, and from the couch back to the bed,

her own Herculean tasks, not as big, but just as important.

My grandpa brings out her jewelry box,

a small cedar chest from her own grandmother.

She tells me I’m only allowed to wear her diamonds

on very special occasions.

She gives my dad slides from their summers at the coast,

and when he says he doesn’t have anything to view them on,

my grandpa comes back with two slide projectors from 1986.

She tells us stories from her seventy-odd years of life.

She talks about her childhood and how her grandfather smoked so much

that the insides of his house turned yellow.

My dad argued with her about the worst trouble he ever got into,

and she told us about the time she accidentally locked me in the car

and had to call the fire department to get me out

(and how I slept through the whole thing).

And as long as we didn’t mention the empty bottles of Ensure,

or the smoothness of her head,

or the reason we all drove hundreds of miles to see her,

everything was okay.

-Johanna Evans is a sophomore from Cornelius, NC, pursuing majors in Psychology and English with a concentration in Creative Writing.-