by Karen Crawford
You used to say why isn't my son here, and I might have asked the same question if I wasn't married to him, and he wasn't married to his job, but he's here now, saying all the things he couldn't when you were well, and I know you can hear him by the tear that's traveling down your cheek.
I don't know it yet, but you'll be alone when you cross over (because your son won't want it to be his last memory of you). But I'll have many; like the time I asked the doctor to tweak your chart so we could keep you out of the memory care ward, and how you leaned to one side in your wheelchair in the emergency room on Memorial Day after your third or fourth fall, and how a canvas of bruises purpled your arms, after the nurse searched for a vein, the way you held your son's hand, your fingers gnarled and yellowed, and kissed it before you went under–and when you finally came to, you looked at me and said: what happened, I thought I died.
We wouldn't know until later that these would be your last words, the last time your eyes would be bright and unwavering, that we'd be packing up your room like we did your large house, but with a suitcase instead of a dumpster. A suitcase that would live in your son's closet. A suitcase he still can’t bring himself to open.
Karen Crawford lives and writes in the City of Angels. Her stories have been included in The Welkin Press, Gooseberry Pie, Flash Boulevard, Fictive Dream, The Citron Review, Best Microfiction 2025 and elsewhere. She is a multi-Pushcart, Best of the Net nominee and 3X longlisted in Wigleaf's Top 50. Find her on Bluesky @karenc.bsky.social
Emerge Literary Journal 