Nan is wary of trips. Trip-and-fall trips. Not traveling trips. Traveling trips—the kind with heavy luggage and public bathrooms and bouts of standing in lines and eating unordinary food—are firmly a thing of her past. She’s been places. Too many places. Enough places to know that the cliches are true and home is where your books are and pride comes before most falls.

But one needn’t go far to fall. The pamphlets at the community center say most accidents happen at home. Rugs, they say. Loose mats and poor lighting and trailing cables, they say. Nan’s home has none of those. She’s meticulously removed hazards and she always carefully lifts each foot, eyes firmly on the ground in front of her.

And that is why Nan knows for a fact that she has not tripped. And yet, here she is on her kitchen floor, staring up at the splatter of poop a crow deposited on the skylight, with the left side of her body frozen and her tongue lagging as if a snail has taken residence in her mouth.

She should call her son. Call 9-1-1. Call someone. But her phone is by her bedside, an impossible ways away. Besides, she can wait. She’s had tea already and she doesn’t eat much after four. Not anymore. Not since the doctor told her that evening meals worsen reflux and that’s what causes nighttime heartburn.

Her plate is empty. She’s fulfilled all obligations, even the one sprinkle of food for the fish and the daily wave to the friendly neighbor who checks in on her while walking children to the bus stop. Through the pane, framing the splattered crow droppings, the sky shifts colors as the sun takes his leave.

Nan closes her eyes. She is done for the day. She is done.

Amy Marques

has been known to call books friends and is on a first name basis with many fictional characters. She has visual art, poetry, and prose published in journals such as Bending Genres, Chicago Quarterly Review, Ghost Parachute, Gone Lawn, MacQueen’s Quinterly, MoonPark Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, and Streetcake Magazine.

You can read more at:
https://amybookwhisperer.wordpress.com