Ruth Niemiec

Whiskey, Wisteria and Poker Nights

Awake. Roll your old bones out of bed. Off the torn bygone mattress in which springs once sprung, but over quick and slow years have become bent wires, each in an opposing direction. Your babies, your children, don’t visit you anymore. Their photos bleeding to sepia on your mantel, dust distorting the shape of their smiles, noses, eyes. You stopped looking at the photographs. Your babies visiting less and less, kind of, evaporated your soul, cigarette smoke in a jar, it felt like, for a little while. When the grandbabies were between the ages of birth and seven, they came to your house, wowing at the way you knitted rainbow blankets and cooked shortbread, so good you could taste the tongue laminating butter in the baking smell. Grandbabies made you feel younger. Really, the sun felt newer, you were much less tired. If you didn’t catch your reflection in the windows of the house, chasing them with a hose or pushing them on the tree swing, you could have sworn you were thirty, maybe forty years younger. When the older babies, their parents came to collect them, you became acutely aware of the stage of your life. Late. Slow. Nearer to the end than the beginning. Your own offspring spoke to you so loud, like you couldn’t hear them and then they’d whisper about you. You heard everything. You loved your family, still, and sunny days, in that order. One day you fell over and had no choice but to pull the phone off the hall table by its cable and call your son. He rushed over and you thought with a broken heart, oh, he looks scared and sad. In less than a month, which felt like a minute, they packed up their modern and minimalist home, moving to another state. Left you, alone. Your baby, your son, he rang you a week later to say they’ve arranged meal deliveries to your house. You say “thanks” and “hope the kids are well?” the receiver clicks to silence. Years go by and you haunt the spaces in this building, once your home and you look in the mirror to feel alive. At night, sometimes, you drink a little port and shoulder dance in your armchair, holding a photo of your late love in your lap. You remind him of beautiful days that you had on the coast, wisteria exploding into bloom over white picket fences, perfuming the night and the inside of your head. You remind him of your lovely young friends, poker nights, whiskey and cigarettes, the garden you planted together in spring, how gentle he was with you and your babies, all five, how beautiful you were, you, with your flaming red hair and big mouth alive. You fall asleep and awake, with the morning light piercing the painful cracks in the blinds and for a fleeting moment you think he’s beside you. You know that when you pass from this world, when you die, when your skin empties and feeds the dirt, when you leave this world and its meaning, that he will be waiting for you, in that fine, woollen suit, perfectly open, holding a bouquet of pink roses. You’ll be home.

Ruth (she/her) is a writer of non-fiction, fiction and poetry in English and Polish. She received her BA with a major in Professional Writing from Victoria University. Her latest work has recently appeared in Dumbo Feather (aus), Mamamia (aus), ABC Everyday (aus) Neon Literary Magazine (uk), Coffee People (us), Parliament (us) and Rhodora (in). Ruth also reads creative non-fiction for literary publications; Catatonic Daughters and Kitchen Table Quarterly. You can drop her a line at http://www.ruthniemiec.com or IG @ruth_niemiec