Cognitive Decline3rd Place in the Poetry Writing Contest
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Issue 19
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Our son saves his father’s businesses, negotiates with
banks and county tax authorities to spread out thousands of dollars in unpaid years. He repairs neglected restrooms in rental properties, attracts and signs tenants for rents—yes-- less than his father always demanded in combative bouts, but his father’s tactics left empty stores, offices, left bills unpaid, called down foreclosures on every property acquired in his healthy years gone by, so when this wonder son asked his dad to make him co-manager, it was because dad made less and less sense, caused ruptures with each worker he said he’d pay, shouted and raised his fists, insisted they were out to cheat him, but then, in a lucid moment, dad agreed. Our son took the reins. Only, now, this father shouts to me, the mother, that our son keeps him in the dark, steals from him, takes over bank accounts without my permission, overpays plumbers, keeps the extra money for himself, yes, he robs his own father, hides the truth from me, the father shouts, even as he walks down the street with his wife. He won’t get a penny from me, nothing, he doesn’t deserve it. And I, the mother, know—because our son does talk to me—that we don’t deserve such a fine man as our son. I say we were bad parents, we worked too hard, too long and in leisure moments, we fought. If I were to take back those years, I wonder if we would have raised such fine children who saw what not to do and loved us just the same, even as their dad dives headfirst into paranoia, cognitive decline. Dear son, let us thank you for your forgiveness and our redemption. |
ALICE CAMPBELL ROMANO won 3rd Place of the Poetry Writing Contest. She is a published poet, print and on-line. Her first chapbook, The Consolation of Geometry won C&R Press Summer Tide Pool Prize, came out in Autumn, 2024. She’s lived in Italy where she translated film scripts from Italian to English but is settled at last in NYS with her Italian husband.
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