The Forgotten Elder
She sits in a room that smells of lavender and dust,
Waiting for the phone to ring, her faith corroding into rust.
Her hands remember dances, recipes, the weight of holding tight,
Now they fold and unfold napkins through the long fluorescent night.
The nurses know her name but not her story, not the war she lived,
Not the children she raised solo, not the decades that she gives
To this chair, this window, this view of a parking lot in rain,
Where every passing car is someone who forgot to come again.
A volunteer arrives with coffee and a half an hour to spend,
And the light behind her eyes remembers what it’s like to have a friend.
She talks about the garden, about the roses, about the way things were,
And for a moment, the silence lifts, and the world remembers her.