Jacquelyn Helin Follow

It's Sunday afternoon
Radio's playing outside
TV bleeds from the next room

Antiseptic in the air
Nurses laughing down the hall
Crooked feet in crooked shoes
Her wooden cane against the wall

It's Sunday but her Sunday clothes
Are packed away somewhere
She doesn't need them anymore
Nothing to look her best for

I'm thirteen, I'm with my mother
She doesn't know my name
I remind her I'm Lucy
But she looks at me the same

Like I'm a stranger she should remember
From a place she can't return
We've only just walked in
She says we've stayed too long
Too proud to be remembered
As a mother without a home

Oh, it's time to go
Oh, it's time to go
It's a dirty trick
This growing old

We walk the halls anyway
My mother holds her arm
She's pleading with us to leave
So we walk her to her room

And we drive through the old neighborhood
The grand homes of the South Side
So many are abandoned now
So many lifetimes locked inside

And at the dinner table
It's my parents and me
I sneak looks at the two of them
To see what they need from me

And later she calls me over
Where she sits alone
She's polishing a silver ring
I've never seen before

She says this was Molly's
It was her mother's ring
I'm keeping it for you
As she kept it for me

Oh, it's time to go
Oh, it's time to go
It's a dirty trick
This growing old

I'm told Molly was so proud to have
Another baby girl
Her only granddaughter
But I don't remember

This is what I remember

It's Sunday afternoon
Radio's playing outside