Oatmeal Peanut Butter

a little poem about the end

photo by Chris Gallagher

Oatmeal Peanut Butter Cookies

What say you? For years now, it’s been like this—a flooded town.
All the magistrates gone. Schools turned to soup lines
run by the children themselves. All is chaos, and yet underneath
sings joy, contentment. We gather plastics, pieces of things long discarded unrecognizable as whatever they used to be.
To us they’re just “small red triangle,” fluffy bit, shard, a thread. Discoveries.

Last week, a horse swam the canal, eyes wild.
People’s houseboats have gone to sea.

What do you think of this predicament: mortality?
Do we struggle to return to how it was, how it is rumored to have been— societies, libraries, facilities, snow? Healthy bodies making love and plans.
Sometimes there were cool days in summer with gentle breeze.
You bought a house.

My friend in room nine is dying. He told me about the kind of cookies
he likes best. It was just a hint he dropped. I should bake them
and bring them to him before he’s too sick to eat them,
before he’s gone.

I dreamed all night of the recipe he described: soak the raisins
so they’re soft, then stir them into the oatmeal and peanut butter
dough. (This kind of cookie is new to me!) Bake dozens.
Put them on a pretty plate. Take them to him.
It’s been a week since he gave the hint!
Just hope he’s not busy with nurses or other guests, or already deceased.
Watch him—tall, gaunt, angry, petty and kind,
mournful, grateful and sad. He knows he’s going.

There’s a photo in his room of how he used to be.
I never knew him then: big-boned with a fleshy nose
and small unreadable eyes looking away,
his lap filled with daughters. A cowboy hat on his head.

Now his eyes are huge and speaking. His hair is short.
The daughters don’t come to see him.
It’s just us to love him now,
our flooded town, a wreck about to sink.

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This is Emily Writes Back, a newsletter since 2019 of stories, poems, cartoons, essays, and an advice column that wasn’t really an advice column. Paid subscriptions with extra content for subscribers coming soon.