Handedness: A consistent Kindness

Handedness: A Consistent Kindness

Verily I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me.

And they were exceeding sorrowful

                                                                                Matthew 26:21

You sat at the table with the rest of us,

where we would have to decide if it needed to end

for her, and you sat the way you used
to sit at supper, with your shoulders

rounded and slumped and a fist

around your fork handle.  You’d just been

yelled at about something, your posture
I bet, and she talked about how when

her father was young his father

would walk by him and punch him

between the shoulder blades to prevent

him from getting a hunchback.  I guess

maybe they got tired of telling their sons
to sit up straight, and maybe for them that's

excusable, a consistent kindness. 
I don’t really remember what all 

she said to you because I’d been spoken to too,

and I don’t remember what was said

to me either.   So the last time a table
came between us it was like all the other times

a table came between us 

though for years we were, you and me,

on the same side of it and the wood grain
ran parallel ahead of us like a road out...

me to the right of you and you

to the left and on the end

so that you didn’t bump into anyone with
your left elbow. I think maybe it was

the only other consistent kindness they gave 

you.  I’d watch you break open a potato

so it split deep enough for the given ration

pat of margarine and your always hill

of pepper.  They never said you used

too much of that, though she always

tried to take away your liking for it

by saying little boys who eat too much

pepper will pee the bed.  And you’d

get tense and keep on shaking

the shaker until all that dirty white potato

(she never washed them) was black.

And like a disease that’s catching we none

of us could leave until we had a clean

plate.  And you always did and some-

times you’d help me with mine, but only

after our sins were laid out like the dead, and

after her back was turned to the counter

to reach for the pack of Pall Malls

she’d always light up before any of us

were done and didn't that made me hate eating

at the table even more, so we stayed

quiet—even on

that day we'd say take away her life
support, a family sitting a table, before the four doctors

stepped into the room they’d all been called

to off their regular rounds (or wan't this

a scheduled appointment, planning for her

dying?) to read to us all

the reasons the next course of action

should be extubation, and why her quality of life

would never be improved, I watched you

lift your left shoulder and rub it

as if some harm had come to it 

recently.  It had been years since

I'd seen you and now we barely speak.  But

that day we were taking her life

away you weren’t 35 and I wasn’t 37.

I was remembering the day you were six

and I was eight and we’d just seen a full

pot of creamed corn go down onto the floor

and she’d scooped up what she could

onto our plates and slapped

down that patty of cube-steak.  We didn’t

look up at her or even at each other.

We waited.  We said grace.  And when

she bumped into the door to the living room to

eventually pass out on the couch, only then
did we tip faces, me to you and you to me and we smiled

and she yelled ‘shut up and eat’ and we

did, we exhaled everything we’d held on

to and ate.