more time

a mother sits down with a beat up & disheveled box of old photos---
she had just gone upstairs to get them
with footsteps on an extremely dusty surface
as each step so hard these days
as the years have passed like
burnt matchsticks
presses down into the caked dust
because no one inhabits the upstairs of the family house
any longer---
she sits down in the living room
across from her aging husband
who has grown tired after a life of labor in
construction &
now, with prostate cancer,
he waits out much of his days sleeping, watching movies &
reading.

she picks up each picture with a smile on her face &
shares the old memories with her husband,
they have been together for what seems like forever &
they laugh & remember,
like something so beautiful, it could only be in the
movies.

when he gets up to go to the bathroom,
she calls for her son to come & look at the pictures,
when he comes out of his room,
she describes to him how much of a “hunk” his father was back then,
when he had just got out of the army &
she says so innocently,
“i just wish we had more time.”