stickman review

Old Woman

by Jane Downs

Her finger marks the place where she’d been interrupted by the child calling. She wants
to finish reading the poem, but now the delicate thread between page and mind is
severed. She knows she can’t go back and this thought makes her want to weep. There is
a photograph of her on the table, its oval frame painted gold. In it she sits on a chair
reading. She is twenty-seven. Her children are unborn. Her mother is still alive. Her
father has begun to think he no longer wants to live. The poem made her think about all
the houses she lived in, their rooms leading to the one she’s in now. The words stirred
something uncannily familiar in her—a restfulness almost but not quite attainable. Then
the child’s voice calling.