It's Still Life

A Haibun About Two Sisters

My mother, who in her mid-90s was nearly deaf but refused to get a hearing aid, said she had no problem hearing her sister, my aunt, and that they understood each other perfectly well, except that my aunt was stone deaf and therefore always wore a hearing aid, although it rarely worked – the batteries were always dead. And my mother and her sister would sit on the sofa and knit, watching TV with the volume +50, and the man in the flat above would rap his cane on the floor in pure frustration at the noise, but my Mum and her sister never heard the man banging on the floor upstairs, or at least they never pretended to, because why pretend to care about something when you really don’t, that’s what Mum told me. And besides, Mum said, nobody ever died from poor hearing, which is true – neither of them did.

And if I shouted,
Mum I miss you, she might still be
deaf as a puddle.

AI Digital Artwork is my own, created using AI Midjourney. Imagery and poems ©Misky 2023.