Old Men in a Window Shop

She cheerfully giggled again.

“I know right! It makes him look like an idiot.”

“Awww, but he’s almost cute!”

“Yah right! I don’t think so!”

Those hateful, scarlet words that poured out of their mouths, describing the pair of earmuffs that covered the scars; that aching pounding that wouldn’t cease until they were gone; finally, ended.

If only they could…no they wouldn’t ever. They wouldn’t ever understand what it felt like, at least, for now. Age is a hilarious thing to the fools who are right now aging. It nearly made me laugh through the pain. The thought that these pretty girls would someday be sitting where
I am now. Friendless. Without a family. Alone, in hospice.

These young ones always thought themselves so clever. They immediately would recognize…my…disability, then scandalize it as if I had any choice. As if I had any possibility to somehow regain my hearing. To somehow make my own mouth spurt words wherein none could come. A well that dries up, only that could understand me now.

It was picturesque in a way though. Dried up. Dried up like the prunes I was forced to eat, what made me blush from the crassness of the thing. Dried up like the land outside of my hospice window. Dried up like my withered old life. Dried up till there was no water, then left to scald and die. Wither. Fade. Then extinguish.

But the fact that so many had to scorn me, me, in my dumbness. In my sense loss. But little did they know my gift. The gift that allowed me to not only see what they are saying, but to See what they were saying.

I could see that young man’s mouth move when he read those poems outside on the gathering lawn. I hid behind my window for hours, watching, as he waited. He always waited to see her, knowing that she could neither see, nor hear, nor feel him. He was reading as if to someone. Practicing. Practicing to recite it to that shriveled old woman who would not hear him. I wished he would visit me secretly. But I knew there was no chance. The nurses here did not know my gift, and I wasn’t about to tell them. They treated me like a dog, a dumb animal that couldn’t understand its master.

I could picture him in there every day, reciting like a school-boy. Unoriginal and afraid, he came off with so much awkwardness. It was strange, put so much effort in to talk to a living corpse.

Yet as he sat there now, there was no awkwardness. He recited believing. His mouth moving distinctly, his words pouring a fountain of Minty greens and Placid blues. They mixed together with the lawn and sunshine, and created a fairy garden for these never dying poems to reside in. I wished I could get out there and live with them too, discussing many dead poet’s poetry. To talk to the young man.

But I couldn’t…at least, not until 4:00 P.M.: walking time.

What was the use of walking time!? What was the use when I felt like walking all the time, felt like escaping this grey world that was now my home. I felt like walking. I couldn’t just sit around waiting till I was “allowed” exercise. Was I a prisoner in a prison camp?! I felt betrayed. How could my own family…another time.

The man in the Fairy lawn left because his grandmother died. She simply disappeared off the face of the world, like the engagement ring on his finger. His dedication, his earnest poetry was not enough. I never saw him again. But he left happy, because he believed his grandmother hear his words. And I believe it.

I do hope he listened to those poems, not only read them.

I missed hearing words, hearing gentle caressing. I missed the opera music my mother was so fond of, playing on repeat throughout the day. I smiled remembering her practicing in the basement when she thought others couldn’t hear. But, we laughed at her then. Hatefully.

What a blessing to be able to hear. I faintly remember that last week. I remember the sound of my mother’s goodnight kiss, the sound it made on my cheek. I remember my father working in the garage as I tried to sleep. Sharp banging, metal on metal. The snores of my baby sister. She was diagnosed with Leukemia the same month of my accident. I didn’t realize, I didn’t appreciate. My life, my family would change.

I was simply alone. No one stood between me and death, no compromiser, no physical hand to comfort. Just the cold fingers of the nurses, the nurses who had inch-long fake nails. My wife: non-existent. My kids: the same. I lived always alone. Now: I die alone.

Fitting.

And these young children try to harass me, without knowing. These living corpses that have their fun, then pass from memory. The children that try to bring my spirit down. But they don’t realize that you can’t get a spirit down when it’s already three-feet into quicksand.