Aunt Annie

My rubber soles trudge through sludge

in the Dunkin Donuts parking lot– a dreary midwinter day.

The donuts will be an offering you won’t get to eat.

Your place looks different now,

from where I’d love to come.

I’d play on your computer, you’d paint my nails,

and together we’d bake– Christmas cookies and pretty cakes.

Now I sit at that table,

the plastic covering still squeaks,

I nibble at a donut I don’t care to eat.

Its sugar scratches the paper plate in the silence,

as I dread to be called to your room.

“You can stroke her head. It’s soft.”

My hesitant fingers feel the fuzz of a peach.

I don’t remember the last time we spoke, but I know

the soft whimper you emit still resembles your voice.

You never thought the twinge in your back

could be cancer gnawing through your bone.

Ironically it first bloomed in your lung,

when you never even smoked.

I don’t know why I abandoned you

when you needed love most;

Maybe I was just afraid,

but now I wish I used those days.