My mother left her fingerprints on Sun Magazines.
I bought her a subscription for Chanukah every year
for the nine years she lived in a nursing home near me.
It was a gift from me to her and then from her to me
as she carefully remembered to pass each copy on to me
when she finished reading it.
Her chocolate flavored fingerprints marked the pages.
She ate chocolate while reading. Silver wrapped kisses
were a favorite. Visitors often brought them. I would replenish
the supply she kept in the night table next to her bed.
I put the copies she gave me in a basket.
I had no time in my life for reading back then.
It’s been eight years since her passing. I find the time now
to go through those magazines and discovered her fingerprints.
I wonder what she thought of the stories. They are tales
of vagabonds, weirdos, sensitive souls full of suffering,
over losses- of babies, of parents, struggles -with mental disorders,
addictions, disabilities of every variety. She never talked about
what she read in those cherished issues.
She was always reading something. She judged the other residents
harshly for staring into space, for being idle. She kept busy turning pages
of any book or magazine, she could get her hands on. She read Hillary
Clinton’s autobiography and Fifty Shades of Grey. She kept a book
in front of her, long after she stopped speaking and her eyes were half glazed.
I read those magazines now turning the fingerprinted pages thinking
about how much like her I am becoming. I certainly am looking like her
more now as back trouble has me stooping over a walker some days.
I have my own stash of chocolate in a jar on the top shelf of my pantry.
I wonder where I am leaving flavored fingerprints.
panoply, a literary zine 