MEAN TIME | Jennifer Ochstein

From her assisted living
care home room stuffed
with clothes she no longer wears,
she warns I’ll miss her when
she’s dead. I can’t tell—
threat, admonition, or
coded SOS?

The U.S.S. Enterprise model
she bought last Christmas
with her birthday money
leans sideways on a kitten
coloring book landing strip,
derelict but intact, all the decals
attached. Her television’s tuned
to “Impractical Jokers.”

Alien, I survey the scene, want
to ask if the ship crash landed
on a planet stocked
with cat ladies getting high
on Xanax. I admit I’m in
my mean time, between
work and home,
which is also to say,
I’m currently mean
for having no good
way to grieve. Speaking

of cats, Oscar, the black one
I gave her, died in her closet.
She couldn’t think what to do
with him, so dumped him in
a dumpster. No practical joke
Rather, panic. Don’t panic.

She’s worried we’ll mistake
her for dead. Bury her alive.
She says, It happens you know.
Again I tell myself not to panic, say
Don’t tell me how to feel when you’re gone,
but she’s ignoring me, watching
the television jokester show host
slap pastries from unsuspecting
hands. Meanwhile, I want
to ask why she’s hoarded
a Xanax stash in her jewelry box,
a tiny white death collection.
Just in case—not sufficient. Instead,

I steal her remote, flip
to Star Trek: The Next Generation
re-runs. Watch when Captain
Jean-Luc Picard points, says
“Make it so,” his spaceship looping
warp speed to unknown galaxies
like an assisted-living care nurse
making the rounds, doling
out medication for what ails
his patients. When her nurse knocks,
hands her a white paper pill cup,
my mother sets it aside
till the door clicks closed
on a galaxy of starving animals
settling in for the long haul.

Jennifer Ochstein is a Midwestern writer who explores the edges while living in the muddied middle. Her work has appeared in Sojourners, Under the Gum Tree and the Cresset. When she's not writing and teaching, Ochstein is hiking with her Newfoundland dog and her husband. She is greedy for more experiences in the wilderness.