Carmelina Fernandes-Kock am Brink
Falling Back
The fetal position consumes her
Sheets up to her ears she sleeps
Bereft. Calling out to her absent husband
“Are you there?” and
“Is the baby safe?”
The fracture of her pelvic bone
Causing her to writhe in pain, the
Physical memory of traumas past
Washing over her brain, taking her
There locked in a frame of
Long ago.
One second of negligence
At the senior home
Had sent her crumbling.
The brakes of her walker
Unsecured
While the attendant had gone reaching
For the comb
To smoothen her hair, make her feel
Pretty as she always said.
She had become
Confused incoherent reverting to the
German of her childhood.
Fearing a stroke, her husband had phoned
For an ambulance.
In the hospital isolation ward
Corona measures prevail. Spouses
Left out. The agonizing wait. Testing
Negative, both of them. Three days later,
In the general ward he
Holds her hand. Holds her fast.
She takes him for her father reminds
Him to take her mother for a walk
To show her some attention. All this
In German when English had always
Been their lingua franca
Both of them strangers in this promised
Land.
He drives back and forth wonders
How long her mind will cling
To the lifeboat that keeps
Him away
Adrift on shore.
Today he’s her father still and she
Is chatting away in her native tongue yet
This time smiling, doted on by the tired
Staff, who hadn’t thought of the safety
Strap of the chair where they’d seated her
While making her bed. She’d tipped over
Fallen, yet gently so.
This evening back in the home alone
In his bed distressed
By the certainty of security
Measures that will impose her isolation
Yet again once she
Returns. The testing for Covid.
He hopes to recover in her eyes
The features of her life-
Long partner.
He’s elderly and tired too.
All this running.
—Submitted on 11/29/2020
Carmelina Fernandes-Kock am Brink is of German-Indian background, grew up in Canada, and teaches English in Toulouse, France.
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