Like Old Times

She’s knitting another scarf, like all
the previous ones. We would call it a day,
and be done with it until tomorrow.
But she’s so bound to the safe anchor of sameness,
any deviation, like pouring cereal
before her morning’s coffee, it becomes like
she dropped a stitch somewhere,
a purl before a knit, and the scarf,
her smoothly knitted day,
would just flat out unravel.

He nibbles at the same meal over two nights,
but he will slowly consume the entire newspaper
over the course of each day.
As if his mind’s teeth were in a glass,
he inexorably gums Page A-1 through the obits.
Obits always first, though.
That will never happen to me, you say.

She sits all day and waits for a call,
and when you call, she says you’re
the only one who has. And then you listen
to pretty much the same rap as yesterday’s
and the days’ before that. Meanwhile,
the news channel’s booming in the background
up to the Led Zep levels of your youth.

You shake your head. But tonight
you’ll place your slippers (slippers!?) just-so
next to your bed and set the alarm
for that same time, for that same rush,
to that same job you’ve said for ten years
you can’t wait to retire from so you finally
can do what you want, but likely will be
the same thing day after day. You know,
like will never happen to you. Says you.

©Joseph Hesch 2012

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