A Life Once Lived Bobbi Sinha-Morey Confined to her home, an oxygen machine by her bed, angry at herself that she can no longer drive, she waits for her caregiver every day, life around her having dissolved: people, French shoes, aspirin in water, a mist the sun burned away. Now in her mid eighties, hair a halo of white, she remembers loving pink candy hearts, hoarding them, counting them, her pink abacus of health, letting each one slowly melt on her tongue. She, a miser of medicines, survives on what sweet things are left to her as best she can, and the mirror in her bathroom holds her face like two Italian, tapering hands. A lady once of porcelain skin, ebony hair; her hands dotted with age spots she couldn’t hold back, blue veins in each one like a map. In her dreams she is twenty-five again and wearing her jewels; a lifetime she’ll never forget, and now in her senior years, memories are reaching up to her lips. In her porch window the best part of the day is waiting for the sun’s afterimage.
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