DRIED PAINT
He clings to his rusty wheelchair,
As he clings to his dirty brushes.
He doesn’t know when he’ll breathe his last piece of air.
Strokes mix blue like it means something—
But his work never good enough.
He looks at it,
He reacts with a disappointed gruff,
As if a dirty rat had run across his newly cleaned welcome mat.
His caretaker opens his lace curtains
So he can view the dainty dandelions from outside,
While his depressing paintings get dried.
His nephews wonder if he even cries.
He jokes of his upcoming death,
But they don’t know if they should laugh—or just not yet.
He’s read nearly every book,
Though his favourite in the library is Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
He has a strict fruit-and-veg-diet—
red strawberries,
sometimes a buttered scone with tea,
All laid out neatly in his floral china bowl—
Even though he smokes nineteen cigarettes a day.
To keep life alive,
He loves stories of prey,
And childhood plays—
It’s small moments like these that make him want to stay.
He lives alone,
He doesn’t complain.
Never gets calls on his house phone.
The doctor said cancer has grown in his brain—
It started when he was middle-aged and grown.
An old man’s hobbies,
Full of art and passion,
But he lacks self-compassion.
He talks to his computer,
Unaware how much he needs conversation—
Like if a train on purpose missed the station.
Another day
That looked like the other—
And he knows there will be another.
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Featured image credits to Jan Jakubowski on Pixabay
