"It's Not About That" by Maureen Martinez

VOICEMAIL POEMS

It’s not about who made the mistake with the wrong address in the GPS getting us to Brooklyn an hour late, is it? It’s about your retirement and our finances, and a 20-something living in our house without employment but with a car payment. It’s about the four scrapings the dermatologist did this summer to determine if I have another basal cell carcinoma. It’s about the arthritis that’s making my fingers achy and your neck pain from past injuries stealing your sleep and making you cranky. It’s about the rising prices on the three bedroom houses with a view of the Blue Ridge Mountains we’ve been dreaming about since ‘19. It’s about Sandy who we visited Wednesday at the assisted living facility and her forgetting the names of her grandchildren because of that nefarious bitch, Dementia. Getting off the elevator to see her, we were hit with the thick odor of overripe flesh, like forgotten Georgia peaches adrift on scorched Southern grass in August. She was lining the hallway of patients in front of the nurse’s station, a parade of motionless commuters waiting for a train never coming, together simmering in a fragrant stew of steaming blankness, backs to the wall, heads lolling forward onto their avian chests. But I digress. Arguing about who did what is a distraction, yes? Blaming and projecting emotions like anger are easier to manage than our current circumstances. If we end up like this, let’s promise to go to the home together and sit next to each other touching elbows in our matching sweatpants with elastic bands as I misdirect your attention again by shouting Look at that! While giggling and pointing to the left in order to snatch another fry from your unbreakable plate and you happily letting me do it. ————————————– Maureen Martinez called us from Bronx, NY. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems