Visiting Day
1.
At Dunkin’ Donuts, I tried to gather chairs so we could sit inside together. A woman noticed and gave me her table. Let’s go, Dad, it’s getting crowded. We come every week, she told me when I thanked her. He’s long finished his ice cream. We were just talking about World War II. He’s 98, my dad, who then proceeded to count on his fingers, 99, he said, in three months. At this point, she said, every day is gravy. My son came to the table licking his cookies and cream cone and sat in the seat the man had vacated. I sat across from him, where the daughter had sat, until it was time to drop him back at camp and get on the road to avoid the Sunday afternoon traffic.
2.
We think we’re the ones watching our kids
but they’re the ones with their eyes peeled, waiting
for us to walk uphill, apologize
for forgetting the salami in the fridge,
worrying because we’re half an hour late,
noticing we’re not as tall as we once seemed,
as if they’re the ones visiting us,
practicing for when one day they’ll walk
amongst the stones and narrow paths,
disturbing our routine in that foreign place
where we’ll exist without them,
where they can only imagine
how we spend our days, how lonely
we may feel in our cold beds each night.
3.
When he hugged me before we got back in the car without him, and rested his head on my shoulders, I could feel his scapula. He held me with the long bones of one arm, while in the other he held the plastic bag from Walmart, with ocean-mist spray deodorant, coconut body wash, Chips Ahoy cookies, and two boxes of Wacky Mac.
Maya Bernstein’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in the Beloit Poetry Journal, On the Seawall, the Ekphrastic Review, Pensive, Psaltery & Lyre, SWIMM Every Day, Vita Poetica, and elsewhere. Her first collection is There Is No Place Without You (Ben Yehuda Press, 2022). Learn more about her at mayabernstein.com