- Mar 21
- 2 min read
My Mother Eats an Orange Slice
Two wedges in a tiny bowl in front of her.
She lists in her wheelchair at the kitchen table.
Blind, she gropes them with splayed bones
of gnarled fingers. Mom, don’t you want
some orange? I’d snapped the stained
adult bib tight below the amethyst earrings
I’d slipped into her sagging slits.
At the church carnival fish pond,
she doled out the tickets. Numbered
bins of cheap plastic prizes sat exposed
behind the streaming jets of water.
We each got some small thing.
Better than nothing, our family motto.
Today, I squirm against her hard chair.
She’s out of bed—first time in days.
Why should I? she asked. Then
God help me god help me god help me.
I squirt morphine down her throat
as she cries out. We’ve turned her world
into a trampoline. Hospice is coming today
with the death bed. Her eyes bulge. God’s
not answering. The orange. It’s right in front
of you, I say. Her mouth hangs open to breathe.
Her body, a receding wave, loose skin yanked
down, wrists sinking in weighted air. I need—
she cannot finish. Words in her head
die in the mouth. I nudge her hand toward
wet skins. Remember oranges and bananas?
Dessert for five kids. Overripe. Oversweet.
How much sugar did you pour on those?
She smiles her bones into jutting. Why don’t
you just take a bite? Crooked, leaning
over the arm rail. Your earrings look nice.
Amethyst. Want to go back to bed?
Yes, she whispers. I unlock the wheels.
She cries out again oh god help me.
I lock the wheels. We’ve given up
googling for magic. Will she rally
one more time in the grim darkness
to raise her hand to be called upon?
Some orange, Mom? She’s fingering
a slice. I hold my breath. She picks up
a slice and clamps down, scraping
both sides till the pulp disappears.
She promised God not to kill herself.
I google how to get urine out of furniture.
She grits her mouth closed again.
The dentist won’t fix her broken teeth.
Her hairdresser “retired.” Now, only
her kids call, offering up our plastic nothings.
She’s long forgotten how to make
a call herself. She smiles, sets down
the mangled peel. Pulp on her fingers, lips,
teeth. She signs on for one more day,
and I wheel her away. I can’t say anything
about that other piece of orange
forgotten in the bowl or how I’ll get her back
into bed or whether she’ll get out of it again.
Right now, she is lifting her feet up off
the floor, and I’m pushing. We are moving,
moving.
JIM DANIELS' Late Invocation for Magic: New and Selected Poems is forthcoming from Michigan State University Press. His first book of nonfiction, Ignorance of Trees, was published in 2025, and his latest fiction book, The Luck of the Fall, was published in 2023. A native of Detroit, he currently lives in Pittsburgh and teaches in the Alma College low-residency MFA program.