A Visit to The Rest Home — by Fran Blake

Artwork by James Keul

Grandma is on the terrace overlooking the Long Island Sound.

Her head is raised to the sun, eyes shut, lips singing, “Got the sun in the morning &

the moon at night,” barely audible.

Her stomach is distended as if stuffed, her peach and apricot skin now shades of seeped tea—her liver is the aesthetician shaping this new form.

In this room, The Home which is not her home, she asks us, “Apple pie? Milk?”

She thinks it is the year we lived with her, our father abroad in the military, some war. He came home and we ate lots of apple pie.  Who cares if it was then or now, if we are toddlers or have given birth to our own.

She knows she loves us.

Sometimes she looks in the mirror and carries on a conversation

to ease her loneliness or remind herself of the self that was.

Sometimes it is difficult to reach this room at the end of the hall,

so many people of different sizes and shapes

drifting off chairs, tip toeing in circles, puddles of pee.

It is best to stay in the room once you are here

unless you can sneak out and sit by the water

though once I saw an armada of coast guard boats

because a woman had forgotten she wasn’t a fish.

“Soft land,” someone said. “Soft land is like water.”

Fran Blake has had work in The Oxford Magazine, The Contemporary Review, Poem, Context South and others. She has worked with people undergoing trauma due to personal and political reasons.