A New Time
By
Maureen Piggins
Maureen Piggins is a Toronto visual artist/book artist whose art and poetry have been exhibited internationally. Visit her website at http://www.maureenpiggins.com.
You pick me up at the train station – I watch for your small white car making the familiar turn off Richmond Street. When I climb in, the stale air of the house wafts up and I hold my breath against your rankness. I'm embarrassed by your worn and greasy sweat pants, your woolen hat dirty and limp from winter wear. It's early Spring and you've waited four months for my visit.
I pull open the screens and drag apart the curtains in the unused rooms – it's easier in the beginning while I still carry the imprint of my own life – and gradually, my eyes are taken in by the decay. Rotting food in every room, greasy walls, years of dust. Companions of an old man.
Your cut has healed and I can see the indent in the flesh above your right eye. It happened the night after the rain froze and you went back to the store for the cans of Carnation milk. I got your call several days later, hearing that a stranger had taken you back home to clean your wound. You don't remember the actual fall. It was a shock.
You called a few weeks ago on a Saturday, thinking it was Sunday, and that really broke me – caused me to start seeing the reality of this. But today, I can see the glint in your eye as we stand spying a cottontail through the back bedroom window. A quiet moment, like any other, that can't last.
© Maureen Piggins 2009
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