She’s a Living History Book

She’s a living history book

that you can’t open,

but you can read her life

inside and out:

The weight of every passing year

bends her spine to breaking,

Dancing shoes grow dust under the bed.

Arthritis swells and mangles

the hands that once baked pastries,

the hands that tended now-abandoned roses.

Her glasses can’t slide down her nose

that’s puffed and stuffed and crooked

from falling from a tree when she was young.

She’s a living history book

that hides forgotten in the library,

a book no one will miss when she is gone.

published in Paddler Press Volume 8 “History,” republished on Contemplate