Yellow Finches

Yellow Finches It's Nature's way, I guess, he said, describing the yellow finches turning brown as sparrows in the winter. * Where does the yellow go? * Why do people have to get old? she asks, her ninety-some years flinching at the wilted bodies in the assisted living home where she has just moved. * Photographs by each bedroom door— residents smiling in easier times— collages of former hobbies in bright colors. * Time stretches its wings like it has just landed, or never moved. * I'd have never moved ifI'd have known they were going to put that olefence up. Ache of impossible return. Aunt Rose used to tell a story. There was a woman who'd movedfrom out West. Her husband was working the mines. She'd look to the hills at night and say: Lawdy Gahd, I want to go home. Aunt Amanda had this pretty long red hair. They all got it in their heads that this woman might slip in the window one night and cut offher hair, sell itfor a train ticket home. * Now I know how that womanfelt, she says, picking up the TV remote when the phone rings. 72 7don't know any more than a goose where my things are. Her daughters argue about whether the bird quilt or the flower garden quilt looks better on her bed and where the pictures should hang. * 7 never thought I'd live in a place where I couldn't evenfry an egg. Sometimes I think I'll make me an egg sandwich and. . . * The only sound remaining unchanged is the grandfather clock chiming every fifteen minutes, striking the hour, splitting the days and nights into pieces * She moves among dreams— driving through the Wildcat, riding the train in from Roda, crocheting afghans, fertilizing roses, shopping at Piggly and PayLess, cooking shuck beans and baking cornbread , reaching into the cupboard her husband's hands built, bringing the dinner plates down. . . —Julie Dunlop 73 ...