Rhiannon Willson

We pick the shade together.

After careful consideration

of the sea of pinks and reds

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and sparkling silver, we almost

always decide on pink (silver

is saved for special occasions).

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An hour of our day set aside

just for this, careful strokes

of the brush, your hands warm

​

under my cool fingers, the ripples

of your wrinkled skin next to the

smoothness of mine. I paint

​

your nails. Slowly, carefully,

holding on to you so you

don’t pull away and smudge them,

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so I don’t lose you. We sit there

and wait for the first coat to dry,

then the second. I will tell you

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about my friends and you will ask

if I’ve been courting, tell me stories

of your time in the dance hall with

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the man who would become your

husband, become the father of your

six children, become the love of your

​

life. The twenty year old girl in the

dance hall in a blue dress with pink

nails does not know she will wish

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the handsome boy who takes her hand

goodnight every evening, even when

he is fifteen years dead. The ninety

​

year old woman in front of me winks

as she tells me about the abandoned

air raid shelter she visited once with

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the boy who took her hand. I paint

her nails every week. Just to hold

her hand. Just to hear the stories.

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