BY SHERRI MOSHMAN-PAGANOS
Copyright is held by the author.
We’re upstairs eating a waffle from the food service.
You’re downstairs in the garden level
looking for your mind. Sorry Mom I don’t
mean to joke but otherwise I’ll cry.
Is it under the pillow or did you leave it in your walker
that you open, close, open, store a comb
over some shredded pieces of tissue.
Is it hiding under the green cloth table napkin
you take from the dining room,
to fold, unfold, fold again.
Hiding your hairbrush under the chair cushion,
your sweater, you button, then unbutton,
declaring it’s not right, it’s not right!
Is your mind outside, is that why you get up
and tap tap tap on the windowpane,
sit down, get up and tap some more.
“I never dreamt,” you begin. “Oh if I’d only known . . .”
The unfinished phrases fall with a thud on the floor
as you stare at me then into space.
“And what about the middle?” you ask.
“How can you get to the middle?”
“Mom,” I can’t resist, “what middle do you mean?”
You examine my face as if there
you’ll find the answer to the riddle.
Your old friends “upstairs,” say you’ve lost it.
When you lose it, you never find it again,
like the old photos of our trip to Spain
fifty years before, vanished, gone.
spirited off in the frigid January wind.
***
Sherri Moshman-Paganos is a native Marylander who happily makes her home in Athens Greece. A writer and former educator, she has had poetry and prose featured in the GW Review, Summerset Review, Hemlock Literary Journal, Remington Review and others. She is the author of a poetry collection, Wandering: Poems of Discovery, and two memoirs: Step Lively: New York City Tales of Love and Change, and Miss I wish you a bed of roses: Teaching Secondary School English in Greece. Since 2019, she has published a monthly travel/culture blog on Greece and other destinations. Check it out at https://olivesandislands.home.blog. Here you can find a link to all of her publications at https://olivesandislands.home.blog/resources/.
