Rest

An old woman sits alone,
Swinging on her front porch swing,
Watching highway cars pass, tiny specks of shimmering color.
Her eyes are sepia.
Radiance fading like tea-stained paper.

Her eyes stare into the prairie’s grassy depths.
No squinting or blinking, the sun burns her pupils
Her face etched with the Plains, she chews the grit between her teeth.
Sandpaper wrinkles give texture to sagging skin.
Her hair is soft, white like the feathers she plucked for her pillow
The leathery sunspots on her arms, scars from the field bear witness.

She is the skeleton the county had forgotten.
Her address book is weary, ragged with outdated names
Yellowed like the skin of its owner.
Decades pass. So have they.
Leaving her in conversations with air
The loneliness of wind whispers in tall grasses.

She is alone with the land.
Land she has refused to sell,
She will not mourn.
Stubborn as the oaks that surround her.

After years of work in the fields, harvesting her grains
In the kitchens, providing for her children.
She has earned this solitude,
This forgotten rest, this overdue reprieve.

She stares because she can, because time is not her master.
She creates it with the wave of her freckled hand.