Shuffling the unwrapped deck,
dealing out seven cards, “one for you,
one for me, two for you, two for me…”
I get a great hand, four of a kind,
six, seven, eight of hearts, pretty much have
won without drawing or discarding.
But I don’t want the game to end before
it starts so I hold my
cards, watching to see what Dad plays.
He picks from the pile saying, “This is fun.”
Sitting on the peach sofa beside Dad in his leather lift chair
while he tells me about seeing figures outside watching him.
No matter how hard I look toward the window where he points,
I only see a reflection, not a fleshed-out image.
He stares into shadows of light:
on windows, mirrored walls, or the TV screen
until they become portals to his hallucinated parallel world.
“Don’t keep looking at it, Dad,
your turn,” I say, throwing away a card
I should have laid down
for 10 points.
We talk about past Christmases,
about hours of competitive family games of war,
crazy eights, gin rummy, and Monopoly.
Dad lays down 4 threes,
I throw away my four of diamonds.
Mom comes home from her mammogram smiling at
her husband and daughter with their rummy points
spread out like photographs still waiting to be stuck
beneath the plastic pages of unfinished scrapbooks.
Saving the rest of the game for another day,
I pack my phone, glasses and the card deck
I brought for our game into my purse to go home
until I notice the yellow form she has from her doctor
reports the scan shows an asymmetrical density
on her right breast.
Talking River Review (2013)