The Stain of an Angel
Sitting by the single window a crescent moon in black leather, the woman looks at the length of winter and back to the morning coffee she spilled on the beige carpet now working itself into a considerable stain.
She’s ashamed of that stain leaching into her dignity, a window for all to see how old age carpets down like concrete, cracks skin leaving a woman no hope for lipstick, blush, a cosmetic like coffee to stain back time and help her winter
over losses of husband and home. Winter down this season of verticals that stain palms and map roads ahead. A nice cup of coffee in the morning helps. She sips it by the window in the two-room senior home where the woman must balance it from hardwood to carpet.
It’s there to trip her every time, that carpet in the middle, a bull’s eye in the beige winter of incontinence, meal seatings, dementia and a woman she hardly recognizes. She turns away but the stain betrays her, mocks her in the paned window reflecting back the pooling darkness of cold coffee.
She remembers Papa, gone now, bringing his coffee a freshly brewed demitasse, a biscotti, the salon carpet rich wool, the Christmas tree in the center window of holidays filled with children, grandchildren, winter wonder, crystal glassware and wine to stain linens she embroidered as a younger woman.
Papa comes to her now and she is again that woman. Each night he says, Come with me and brings to her coffee. He extends his hand, guides her past the stain at the foot of the bed, treading softly over the carpet to the door, down the hallway and into winter. They pause a moment and look back through the window.
When he leaves, the woman lays below the window. Her arms fan to sculpt the stain of an angel in the carpet of snow that melts like hot coffee pooling in the center of winter.
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by Catherine Arra
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