Half Full

If I were to update my resume, my longest running position would be caregiver.  I’m a veteran at this point, and like  others who have been caring for a loved one at home for decades, I get tired.  When I write about this aspect of life with Bink, I truly hope it doesn’t come across as all negative or as complaint. I’m well practiced at finding the gifts in this journey, but my reserves just aren’t what they used to be!

I’ve just had two poems published in Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Issue 18*.  Sharing one that addresses burnout, below:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Half Full

You’ve been given a gift, I remind myself
every morning when I wake her with a song,
prompt her through the mechanics of breakfast:
Open the freezer,
find the bag of pre-sliced muffins.
Take one out.
Unwrap, find a small plate
Where do we keep the butter?
Can you find it?
Get a dull knife, cut a few small pieces of salted gold.
Not too big, honey.
On top of the halves like a hat.
Heat, not too long,
Just enough to melt the butter
which you can then practice spreading.

I’ve already cut the orange—
anything involving a sharp knife |is a bridge too far.
Will it ever be time for that?
Maybe next year, maybe in five more.

Can you find the apple juice?

You’ve been given a gift,
I remind myself day after week after
31 years of this cajoling, encouraging, modeling.

A gift, a gift a gift…
I chant silently as I rush against traffic
to be home before the short bus
that delivers her at exactly 2:45 each weekday.

You’ve been given…
I remind myself when she wakes for the 10^th time
any given night, her noncompliant bladder
needing to void.
She trundles down the hall to the nightlit bathroom
a gift,
as the other mothers

mourn and poem about their empty nests,
while I trudge on,
doing the necessary
for what sometimes seems
an endless
thankless lifetime.

Hold it in your hands,
turn it over,
inside out and
keep seeking
and finding
every single glint of lining
that shimmers silver
in my tired, aging bones.

Published in Last Stanza Poetry Journal 10/24

Available for purchase here:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DK3XQ1T6/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.C7QvLzo4jAnKsc5Yoy-4ww.AgA9mX0okiMprwt7NvVH7goebwzTqUlHvhHGMQ2MLa8&qid=1729009419&sr=1-1

 

Thanks for reading!!!

Melinda