She hunches in her white chair
on the verandah facing the busy street.
Lips, wrinkled like old, brown leaves,
move wordlessly as she counts the cars flashing by
every five minutes…

her mind ticking in broken tandem
with the ancient Bulova clock on the blank wall
whose pendulum stopped swinging a long time ago.
Fragmented memories – yellowed at the edges -
dangle precariously in a tattered book,
its dog-eared leaves scattered to the four winds.

Faded words fall off the pages
and slip through her gnarled fingers
like sand seeping from a cracked hourglass.
She clutches futilely at them,
but a frayed strand catches on a jagged fingernail,
slowly unravelling.

More cars speed by,
faster this time.
I glance at the old clock on the bare wall
and wonder if it can be fixed

                                                     written By Jamaica Dawta