12/28/11

Forever
By Samuel Cole


Like forever, they sit together in the porch during the evening shade on matching green recliners facing each other like reflective mirrors.

She sips Earl Gray tea and writes poetry through bifocals.

He drinks Heineken and reads the newspaper cover to cover.

At 8:30pm, hand in hand, they head off to bed. Routine since their last child left the house eleven years ago.

She’s come to enjoy the quiet, but misses her children’s laughter.

He’s come to smoke a pipe and hum while he reads.

“Would you like to hear my latest poem?” she asks, removing her spectacles.

He can hear the excitement in her voice. “Course,” he says, stuffing the newspaper into his lap. “Ready when you are.”

She holds up the piece of paper, rattling inside her arthritic fingers.

He grins, happy to see it’s a short poem. The last poem went on and on, well over five minutes.

“You’ll be honest, right?” she asks, as if questioning his character. “You’ll tell me truthfully what you think of it when I’m done.”

“I always do,” he says, as if frustrated with her unrelenting quest to question his character.

She pushes her spectacles into her face and clears her throat.

He plays with the inside of his ears, pretending to be full of gunky wax.

“Like forever, they sit together in the porch during the evening shade on matching green recliners facing each other like reflective mirrors,” she begins. She pauses.

“Go on,” he says. He knows there’s more.

“What do you think so far?”

“Nice introduction. I can really see the setting.”

“That was my goal,” she says, smiling. “I’m so pleased you noticed.” Rattling the piece of paper, she clears her throat, reads on. Each line grows stronger in voice and substance, finishing the poem out of breath, weeping.

She looks over at his pipe, turned upside down smoking on the newspaper. He too is out of breath, gone forever from the poem she titles forever.


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Samuel Cole lives in Woodbury, MN.