PORTRAIT OF OPA IN 2009

KAYLEIGH CONNER

He thinks of peaches in the twilit hospital room:

The way the soft flesh would break under the rough pads on his fingers nectar tracing paths through the grime of his hands.

Georgia— His back not bowed but broad, neck draped with the braided valedictorian sash, not bent with the weight of 85 years,

or the sterile bed too short for his legs, now rotting tree trunks, hollowed & mossy. His mind tends to wander . . .

Sometimes his visitors sit with stiff arms & smiles paler than the early sun that rises in the tiny window each day, a dirty tennis ball, but he doesn’t recall them. Sometimes, cats in the room— The soft padding of pink feet pillowing in his ears . . .

Mitchell killed mama’s cat, he threw the stone and broke its skull, tried to hide it in the rose bush but I saw the blood.

He has paper, a blunt pencil to write notes to visitors but his hands shake with the strain, he scratches out the word Name & turns one swollen finger towards his own face, that catches on the tube being fed down his throat. The doctors are called to put him to sleep & the moss on his legs spreads.

Before the dark: outside the window, the moon has risen full and ripe, he thinks again of peaches. He asks his visitors’ still bodies

can we pay our bill and leave now.

OPPOSITE ILLUSTRATION BY MELISSA GITCHEL