*
Nina Rubinstein Alonso’s work has appeared in Ploughshares, The New Yorker, Ibbetson Street, etc., and her book This Body was published by David Godine Press. Her stories have appeared in Southern Women’s Review, Broadkill Review and Writing in a Woman’s Voice, and her chapbook Riot Wake is upcoming from Cervena Barva press.

Thin Pudding Sliding off my Spoon

Nina Rubinstein Alonso

Sour memories about three sets of
sweatshirts and pants I brought Dad
in his Brookline nursing home

two weeks later not in the laundry gone
stolen despite labels sewed on just a screw-you
mockery of rags dumped on his shelves

whispering ‘idiot you absurdly assumed 
new sweats would sit here untouched
how stupid can you get how sadly stupid?’

years later Mom’s at Belmont Manor 
more together than Dad was but some days it’s like
thin pudding sliding off my spoon since she knows

I’m her daughter but thinks maybe that woman
across the room is too maybe both of us and I
can’t get used to losing connection 

drive in tears blistering flares of rage
that her condition’s unchangeable can’t fix it
can’t light sweet fires of calm and comfort

then Sunday notice her fingers bare ask where are
the rings she never takes off her gold wedding ring
and two silver I gave her and though she tries she

can’t recall when or where maybe bathing then
turns and opens a drawer by her bed and hands me
a little box with aquamarine earrings saying

“take these home before someone steals them too”
sharp and clear salvaging what she can
managing to give me what’s left.

— Nina Rubinstein Alonso

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