Pipes

She puts my face between her old, stiff hands and plants a kiss on both my cheeks. Her lips are dry, but her smile is warm, and I can't help but hold onto her for just a second longer after our embrace.

"You look just like my granddaughter," she says, her kind eyes resting on my face.

Her vision, like the rest of her body, is deteriorating, and she isn't really seeing me like everyone else sees me (I look nothing like an Italian and I'm sure nothing like her granddaughter), but something about the way her face softens when I'm in her presence makes everything okay.

"The pipes in this building are breaking down," she comments, wiping a drop of sweat off her forehead with her wrist. I too am sweating, and I comment that the place also needs a new paint job. It looks like a run down psychiatric hospital, its stained sea foam green walls peeling and withering.

"This place is really old," I say.

"Not at all," she replies, dismissing my comment with a wave of her hand. I realize how absurd the term 'old' must sound to her.

Her soul houses a lifetime of painful memories - a lost childhood, a husband who taught her lessons with his fists (she still has the scars), and a mysterious killer in the 80's called aids that took away her daughter and son-in-law. Just to name a few.

Old has nothing on her soul.

She stands there in the hallway, her broom in hand, physically frail, but her mind is another story. The woman is nearly gone, but her memories live on, confirming my fear that the worst things in life you will never forget.

She asks about my boyfriend and how our first year of cohabitation is going.

"You're a good girl, and you love each other right?" she asks.

It's the one million dollar question, the one that all of the elderly residents in this complex ask me nearly every time they see me. After all the struggles I've suffered though as an immigrant - impossible legal documents, isolation, mean looks, and cruel behavior, love has never been quite enough to keep me happy here. And yet, they ask me, as if in the end, it's the only thing that matters.

I'm skeptical.

But maybe they know something we don't.

She's looking at me, without smiling, waiting for an answer. She's lasted this long, and she's lost everything, but she still thinks there's hope for us.

"Yes, we do," I nod, "very much."

"Good," she says, and for now it's enough.

In a way, I wish this moment could go on longer because I know that once she disappears behind her door, I may never see her again, and she'll never know that I care about everything she has been through, even though I don't know her. We say goodbye to each other and leave, each behind creaking doors - me in the elevator, and her in her apartment, both of us unwillingly, but forced, to face another day alone.




5.27.12
(conceived July 2011)

Faith

I know you saw the shadows
in my eyes
that were so unlike
the characteristic
golden smiles of pride
radiating from your bloodline.
I wish I took the time to ask you
how you faced the world
when every day could have been your last
how you kept your head up
when you left the love of your life
for months at a time
while explosions greeted you
in your front yard.
I wish I asked you
how you walked tall
and wrote love letters
without falling apart
and how you found a way
to always return home
where twelve blessings were waiting for you.
Sometimes I wake up
and I wonder
which part of you lives in me
and if I'll ever find a way
to express it as beautifully as you.
I'm afraid
that I'll never have your strength
and I will always be
running
toward a love I'll never have.
I never really said
goodbye
when you left this world in peace
But if you're above and watching
I want to tell you
that even though I never asked you,
I know you always had faith in me
and for that I thank you
Thank you for my life
I won't give up on it.


3.18.07