Gap Dynamics

Ember Jones, United States

When Oma Came to Live With Us

Ember Jones, United States

The room was gutted and refitted for geriatric bones,

sagging foam mattress discarded in favor of deep cushions

plumped for swallowing limp skin and sunken sores.

The place was adorned with insulin needles, spare change,

red and white pills encrusted into the pages of a stained large-print

Bible on the bedside table stinking of ammonia and cat litter.

She spoke in uncertain forbiddens, slurred speech:

a cherry-red motorcycle, six fractured ribs—seven unholy

angels, quiet hallucinations, and the drink.

When she went away, she left the ocean-blue walls bleeding

umber / chalky drywall seeping from stab wounds

into the carpet / the splintering closet doors ripped from rusted

hinges / bedsheets soaked with yellowed poison /

uneaten produce still cloaked in grocery bags

becoming gangrenous in the mouth of the refrigerator.

Second-hand oil paintings of roses, fruit bowls, Texan

countrysides watched her go, frames swinging gracelessly

from brass wall hooks, porcelain cowboys quivering

on their shelves before being shoved in cardboard boxes

and made a palace for attic roaches

until they find their resting place

at a landfill or a new home.

Ember Jones (she/her) is a writer and a student of environmental conservation and ecology. She currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief of her university's student literary magazine, The Peel Review. She believes science and the arts are two sides of the same coin and aims to blur the divide between them in her work.