Homecoming
On a layover at Heathrow, or Munich, or Manama, I can’t remember Twirling the small straw in my vodka & tonic at 10 am, which timezone Tapping the bar, watching week old peanuts wriggle and shake in the vibrations
An unsmiling tall man enters with an older gaunt woman, easily late 80s She’s wearing a threadbare sweater and clutches her arms, shaking The man sits down on a stool, calls the bartender, orders a seltzer The woman swivels towards the window, stares through a gray horizon
I make small talk, where are you coming from, where are you going, how about this snow, where are we again?
The man eats some peanuts. “I’m taking her home, it’s time.”
I look at her hair bedraggled and clumped quickly to appear tidy, and failing Her old hands, wrinkled and thin, now splayed on her lap tapping her legs to the unseen rhythm
He says that she left her people to galivant around the world and she had forsaken the old ways,
But the old ways, they don’t forget
She’s sick, it's incurable, she doesn’t have long, and it’s time to return She looks at me, a tear in her eye, takes my hands in hers, she whispers
“Live”
Colin Thomas lives and works in the Southeastern US on various projects during the day and explores writing, fiction, poetry, and form in the evenings. Husband, Father of Three, avid Foodie, and caretaker to various animals.
