Visiting Ethel

Zeiger 25 David Zeiger Visiting Ethel Knowing that our first glimpse of her tied into her chair next to her bed arrested in a perfect form of withdrawal with blank eyes fixed on the TV and mouthing words like wind will trigger a numbing grief, as if there were nothing at all to explain knowing she has no clue to who we are— Can she be glad to see us?— you shovel ice cream into her bloated face, body straining for release while her querulous roommate shrivelled and ashen vies for attention, eyes me from the opposite bed, and shrieks, "I want my mother!" Knowing I am wrong to wish them dead— they are, after all, free in this dry air far beyond our own pedagogy of pain, still my silence is dark with anger because they have outlived their memories and, knowing that after kisses we will wave goodbye into the room from the off-white corridor, exchanging inane pleasantries with the white-clad attendants, I smother yet another impulse to cry out in this closed box, picturing the garden lying in even rows beyond the outer door. ...