I Saw Lines

Melissa Wong

The dry sterile smell of latex and sanitizer
Made the room feel blank,
Like a vague outline of who currently resides there.
This was not the same person
But I kept visiting because,

Well, what else is there to do?

I saw lines
That fell across her face
And the weight of a dripping clock
Tell me
These abstractions cannot be housed.

With blinking wrinkles,
Her face tethered and slack jawed like a hammock.
No matter how many thin translucent snakes you inserted in her,
Her mouth still ached for pools of water
And the desire to clasp her hands together.

I could see veins in her arms climbing like sunrises
Reaching like deltas
Scrawling stories in and along her arms
Of how she had three kids before my mother
And a husband before my grandfather
How she survived an invasion, but her previous family had not
So she began another line,

And she ticked marks on a clock
Never letting a person leave her house without a stomach bulge
Or a sweater.
Her household was a safety net of sundries.
She would call our house, she would leave a message, she would wait for our call.

She worried about you.

She held on tightly,
Her hands would wring until they could no longer hold each other⎯

Those were the things
You almost forgot to notice.

…

A dot hiccups down the green line