Maureen Sherbondy

Skimming Surfaces

Maureen Sherbondy

Lifeguard of tiny creatures and younger siblings, my brother floated. Net in hand, he skimmed the water for sinking flies and spiders.

Ever attentive, later too he kept watch over me as I entered high school, even drawing maps to guide me through teenage angst, so I wouldn’t get lost in those noisy hallways.

Now, recalling the kindness of his ten-year-old self, I can’t come to terms with the disparate actions of the man he’s become,

how he flattens spiders beneath his polished banker’s shoes. How now he only skims those slick city surfaces for stocks and gold.

In fact, when I was in need of rescuing, those dark shoes-they even stepped on me.

Parosmia

Maureen Sherbondy

At first, I believed it was my dead father’s smoke rising from lungs to tongue, his three-pack-a-day habit haunting my body in this post-Covid state. Weren’t you toxic enough while alive? I whisper to him in the ash-scented air. But, lo and behold, now I know not to connect the cause-and-effect to the chain-smoking deceased. It’s just some bizarre remnant of the disease. Still, every waking breath reminds me of Daddy and his refusal to stay buried in the past.

https://healthcare.utah.edu/healthfeed/postings/2021/09/parosmia.php

https://www.cleveland19.com/2021/12/07/cleveland-woman-suffers-covid-sideeffect-that-makes-everything-smell-like-cigarette-smoke/

Maureen Sherbondy has been published in Calyx, European Judaism, The Oakland Review, Prelude, and other journals. Her poetry books include Eulogy for an Imperfect Man, Beyond Fairy Tales, The Art of Departure, and six chapbooks. Dancing with Dali was published by FutureCycle Press in 2020. Lines in Opposition will be published by Unsolicited Press in 2022. She has also published a short story collection, The Slow Vanishing. Maureen teaches at Alamance Community College and lives in Durham, North Carolina, with her husband Barry Peters and her cat Lola.