Jaydn Dewald: Sunsets
The harbor town is chock-full of mothers: for each guest at the inn, there is a mother who will stay with him. From the instant he wakes to the post-lunch stroll along the docks to the quiet, meditative hour in the wicker deck chair, watching the sun sink like a blazing Japanese fan into the ocean, she is at his side. And yet when he asks her, at the rustic cafeteria tables, amidst the steam of his clam chowder, to return home and live with him, she tilts her head and says: “Ohh, sweetie, I can only be your mother here, for a little while, okay?” It’s then that he realizes—something in her voice perhaps?—that she is more than a mere presence, a mere silhouette beside him onto which he can project his remembered mother: she is, indeed, a rather gaunt and gray-faced woman, in a white cotton dress and brown cashmere sweater, like a nurse, teary-eyed after the loss of a patient. “Every morning I take the elevator down to the lobby and believe I will find my son here,” she tells him. “But there are only ever middle-aged men in wrinkled Polo shirts, looking lost and frightened.” He puts an arm around her: she has begun to cry. “Now now,” he says. “You’re still my mother. You have bright red hair, which sunlight turns to fire, and a miniature setting moon in each of your fingernails.” He gently pulls her up from the table. It’s time for their walk. He will not let himself think about packing his suitcase, or returning the persimmon-colored keycard to the concierge, or standing out on the deck of the lowing steamer, one of a hundred other guests, each waving through the grainy predawn mist to his mother. “Cloudlike hands on my feverish forehead,” he says, ushering her toward the mechanical glass-doored exit. “Pitcher of iced tea and your quiet humming.” She gazes down at the tiled floor, silent, and the doors slide open. “Gold bracelets tinkling the length of your forearm. Don’t you remember?” he says, as together they enter the stream of mother-son pairs strolling arm in arm along the promenade, as together they become indistinguishable from the others. . .
JAYDN DEWALD is a
writer, musician, and teacher. Recent work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Beloit Poetry Journal, Columbia Poetry Review, december, Fairy Tale Review, Fourteen Hills, and many others. He currently lives with his wife and daughter in Athens, Georgia, where he's a doctoral candidate in English/Creative Writing at the University of Georgia. More from this issue >