Visiting Hours
At the Assisted Living Facility,
care givers called Dad
the cookie man.
The former professor could be bribed
to take medicine or move
from one carpeted room
to the next.
What a way to move through life,
being shown the next sweetness just ahead,
sweetness to swallow the bitter —
the yellowed fingernails,
warm pea soup smell
that permeated the lowest floor,
the “memory care center,”
a locked ward
that opened onto a courtyard garden
he stopped wanting to visit.
The last time we went out
on the triangular patch of grass,
I handed him
a little pink flower
which he brought to his mouth
to try to eat.
I saw then –
my father.
Anne Mesquita (she/her) studies poetry at the Hudson Valley Writers Center. She is producing a collection about her father’s illness, grief, and coming-of-age. She works in Libraries Administration at Columbia University. She lives in Westchester, New York with her husband and daughter.
The Marbled Sigh 