Persephone

Solitaire

79 Solitaire my mother on the blue couch too many nights alone as traffic rumbled down Main Street and Otter Falls blurred voices from the street. She deals the cards to keep from calling me the 11th time in 12 minutes, would thaw frozen marble cake if she wasn’t saving it for me. When my father was there, his head leaving a stain on the yellow chair, she might have been a little less lonely. She slaps down a heart, thinks she hears the phone. My mother longs to have me back in the lilac room playing Scrabble or watching tv with a brown cow or chocolate. In her college yearbook her room was always full. Get your own phone, Frieda, one woman wrote, so maybe the rest of us can get a date, a call. She carries the phone into the bathroom, next to her bed, won’t still be waiting for my call by the time cell phones are the rage and reaching out to touch is so easy. Hearts, hearts, hearts her blood throbs as Solitaire beats her ...