Tremolo
After the painting by Agnes Martin
Three thousand miles away, I can’t go with my mother to the heart doctor, so
I wish myself beside her, distance blurred until the two of us sit chilled inside
an antiseptic room, glance up at squares in the suspended ceiling–a chess board
bleached, strange game with no opponent, geometry of separation.
My mother waits to see the specialist, one hand holding closed the crease and fold
of paper dress. Her blue-veined feet can’t reach the floor. She asks me to read
the printed card adjacent to the wall art and I do- a cross-hatched Agnes Martin,
titled Tremolo. My brilliant mother tilts her head, says she thinks the patterned grid depicts
the futile effort we all make to subdivide uncertainty, to tuck each breath in its own box.
The ticking clock divides our waiting. At last, the click of door. The nurse enters
on a schedule. She calls my mother Hon but makes no eye contact, checks off
the list on which my mother’s name is written, slips out. The self I’ve willed
across the country climbs up to sit beside her on the crinkle sheet, one arm
around her shoulders. Every shift, an aural shiver. She says again she hopes
the surgeon can insert the mesh, expand the tunnel to her heart. She retells
the news she heard last time: her arterial valve, which should be a silver dollar’s
width, has tightened to a strand of straw. She gestures, hand so light it might
be filled with hollow bones, as if at any second she could float away.
Time and distance spiral through a fluttering
through which we hear the rush and pull of her hardworking heart.
We sit together side by side- listen to the minutes
pass in silicates, their sound sifting through
three thousand miles
of hourglass.
*
Alison Hurwitz is a former cellist/dancer who finds music in language. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, Alison hosts the monthly online reading, Well-Versed Words. Published in South Dakota Review, Sky Island Journal, SWWIM and others, her work was named as a finalist for RockPaperPoem’s 2025 Poetry Prize. When not writing, Alison officiates weddings and memorials, hikes, and dances in her kitchen with her family. Find her at alisonhurwitz.com
Excellent, as always.