He brings the spoonful of Quaker Oats to his lips; his hand trembles but the oats stick to the spoon. His mind quivers and nothing sticks.
A woman smiles up at him from a photo on the front page of the morning paper. He thinks of his wife, the way she tucked her hair behind her left ear, like the woman in the photo. He can barely picture her any more. His mind offers random snapshots of the life he’s lived: a green metal swing-set he shared with his sister, the arc of waves over a long white beach, a fallen friend’s face shaded by a green helmet. A white cat – or was it grey? A piano and a flute. A blue floral sofa he never liked. Bacon, port, rhubarb pie….
Sometimes he can feel his wife’s hand in his – the small fingers with their neatly trimmed nails, the wide gold band that wouldn’t come off over aging knobby knuckles, the long lifeline (a lie, he reckons: she should have outlived him by years). Sometimes, he hears her laughter in his dreams. But he cannot recall much about her face – his mind is a broken camera. Still, he always loved that hair behind her ear.
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