The Shrine
Rising before dawn, she slides into suede slippers,
plucks wing-tip glasses from the unlit nightstand,
this ritual now as mechanical as the scratches
she makes on lottery tickets twice a week—
4 digits from her son’s dog-tags, and the calendar
date, circled in red, the day he returns from Iraq.
Cold breath leads her downstairs where Iraq
waits on television. Bare hands on cold walls, she slips
into the tunnel of day. The draft disturbs the calendar
as she coerces door from jamb: she never could stand
to set it right, he'd spent so long hanging it, the week
before he left for combat. Usually quick to scratch
an itch, but war casts light as well as dark and a scratch
serves only to kill a feeling. She switches on Iraq,
pokes on the kitchen light, lights up a pot of weak
tea, saving the bag in a chipped egg cup. Outside, cowslips
dance in wait of spring and birch withstands
another March. Nature has no regard for calendar
months, she thinks, as she shuffles to the calendar
armed with sharpened pencil, ready to scratch
off another day. Framed by photographs, she stands
and waits for the first wedge of sun to light the dust. Iraq
burns under the same star. Do Iraqi mothers wear slippers
at dawn, waiting for news of the dead, a week-
long skirmish lingering longer than the taste of weak
tea? Pencil between teeth, she flips the calendar
and conducts her daily count, a habit she slipped
into as easily as comfy slippers. Pencil scratches
on a calendar and photos on a wall now define her: Iraq—
her son in uniform pointing a rifle, standing
atop a tank, no longer the 3-year-old fireman stood
on tiptoes, chest out. On tiptoes she sees a week's
worth of dust on every frame. Is it sand in Iraq
that collects on photo frames? Are calendars
with circled dates, stirred by desert storms, scratched
with pencils by mothers on tiptoes in slippers?
She drains the weak tea from her mug, stands
tall in slippered feet and scratches
another day of Iraq from her calendar.
~
Kevin Jackson