by Brian Giddens
Dorothy never thought she’d live this long.
An age where she holds more losses than assets.
First husband? Heart attack. Second husband?
Didn’t linger long from cancer. Friends?
One by one by one by one, a row of dominos.
Every weekend for a time she’d slip on her smart
black suit with the Peter Pan collar, clasp a string
of pearls around her neck, attend a string of funerals.
Her uniform, her grief garb, accompanied by a patent
leather clutch stuffed with tissues.
The kids? Everyone claimed they’d be there
for the so-called golden years. But her oldest died
young, car crash, back when death was a foreign
language. Sweet sixteen, never been kissed. How
does one recover from that? No one recovered,
not really. Her son with a bum liver drinks down
the guilt, his only crime that he survived his big sister’s
demise. The other daughter, the daughter who lived, tries
to make everything right, her dark eyes dart as if hunted,
haunted. She keeps her head down, voice meek, as if
she can’t apologize enough for being in the room.
Dorothy wants to tell her children things will never
be right, never as right as we want them to be. Life happens,
just like that, no one asks our opinion, nobody gets a heads up.
If Dorothy knows anything, it’s this, this much she knows.
Dorothy sees her life now as a poorly plotted movie.
At ninety, her death’s been foreshadowed
too long, the suspense gone flat, the only tension
left is wondering when the hell the credits will roll
and the lights come up. Illusion over, everybody exits.
Brian Christopher Giddens writes fiction and poetry from his home in Seattle, where he lives with his husband, and Jasper the dog. Brian’s writing has been featured in The New York Times (Tiny Love Stories), Passager, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Bluebird Word, Rabble Review, Hyacinth Review, Roi Faineant, Glimpse, and other publications. He has been nominated for Best Small Fictions and the Monarch Queer Literary Award.
