The Back Room, After Death
by Celia Jordan
The Back Room, After Death San Diego, Spring 2014 by Celia Jordan At last, the shock wore off. You spread your carpet, pronounced your fiat mihi from your cot, and slept – through minor droughts, through radio premiers and early morning operas lost to unsuspecting days, before the turn to static and these check-ins from your aid. Now jacarandas bloom again. Your aid’s bright raptures sink unanswered to the carpet, for you’ve not risen early for the turn of buds to blossoms since before this cot became your home. She’ll mutter that you’ve lost your manners. Smile, so. Tune the radio. The sounds repeat themselves on your radio. They mingle with the cooings of your aid and calls from family who’ve slowly lost the will to urge reform. You let the carpet boast its stains, ordain them from your cot. The sanitizers soon will have their turn. In the afternoon, you watch the moths half turn in circles by the glass. The radio announcer plays nostalgia till your cot feels narrow. So you turn and ring your aid, who helps you trudge across the tired carpet. It’s hard to age, and not all needs are lost. By accident, you think of what you lost. His garden, which you gradually let turn to dust to spite his autumn grave … but carpet can deaden memories as they fall. The radio no longer hums his favorite songs. Your aid remarks you sleep less crumpled in your cot. You end the day reciting in your cot a laundry list of things you haven’t lost, like paperweights, prescriptions, and your aid’s new therapeutic pamphlet. Then you turn and shut the light. The silent radio rehearses well-worn secrets with the carpet. The moon claims your cot. Its beams gently turn the years you’ve lost. And while your radio and aid still sleep, the light takes up your carpet.
Celia Jordan is a poet from Montreal. When she's not writing, she's painting furniture. Her work has appeared previously in Ekstasis magazine, and this is her second publication.
