30 Day Picture Prompt Challenge

Ice Cream Social

She never saw the peeling paint
curling in the humid air,
or noticed the once garish hues
faded to sun-blistered gray.
Nor felt the splintered wood of the
boardwalk through serviceable shoes.
She couldn’t hear the calliope
even if it had been playing, which
she assumed it was. No bells and whistles,
no childish glee, no hawking vendors
or crashing waves.
She didn’t see the homeless couple
curled in sleep in an abandoned casino doorway
or realize the desolation of only a few
diehard vendors hanging on to lost livelihoods.
Skeletal remains of the wooden roller coaster
twisted into mangled spiral
designed by storm, not man,
was still scarlet and silver in her mind.

Seated gingerly on the step down to the beach
I remove her shiny black shoes,
thick wrinkled stockings from gnarled feet
and she wriggles her toes in the warm sand.
Carefully, we make our way to water’s edge
and she giggles, childlike, as the cool water swirls
‘round her swollen ankles.
Lone umbrella, striped a gay blue and white
shelters her from unremitting sun, and she sits.
Face towards the water, lost in memories
of younger days, she is safe in the past
alone on the beach.
I run to the last vendor
still serving swirls of vanilla goodness.
On my way back to her, I unwrap the flake
I’d brought with me inserting it into her treat.
Guiding her hand to the cone,
she feels with the other for that bit of chocolate.

Her smile dims the sun.

Tongue swirls,
base to tip. She licks her lips so not to miss
a drop. It’s been decades since she’s had
an ice cream cone on the Jersey shore:
it no longer exists except in her mind.
Saltwater wash-up of sticky fingers, chin.
Her hand drops, sifting sand through arthritic fingers.
Finds, explores a shell I place nearby.

Tired, she nods off like a child; awake, then not.
She dozes in the setting shadows for a bit,
then we make our way to the still empty lot
and head back to her nursing home
we’d escaped from that morning.
Tucked back into her bed
she takes my hand, tugs me close.
Soft kiss on my cheek, she murmurs,
“That was a lovely date, Franklin.”

As I pause in the doorway,
I hear her telling her roommate
about her lovely date with my father
who died twenty-five years ago today.




402 words