Poetry
Karen Kelsay

Photo Credit: Martin Selway

And now, my parents lives have come
to this—they’ve taken separate beds.
At eighty-four, my mother’s moved
into the extra room. Her dresses
line the closet.

They’ve lost their battle with the toss
and turn, the irritating reading light,
arthritic nights, long shadows waiting
for the dawn. A quiet harbinger

of change lurks in the hall
and scribbles words: alone, alone.
They heed them, following the lines,
before the fates interpret
on their own.

Karen Kelsay is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee and the author of five chapbooks: A Fist of Roots (Pudding House Press 2009), Somewhere Near Evesham (The New Formalist Press 2009), Song of the Bluebell Fairy (Pudding House Press 2010), Buttercup Garden (Victorian Violet Press 2010), and In Spite of Her (Flutter Press 2010). Her book, Dove on a Church Bench, will be published next year by Punkin House Press. Karen is the editor and creator of Victorian Violet, an online poetry magazine. She lives in Orange County, California, with her British husband and two cats. Email: pkincalif[at]yahoo.com