wallpaper

she wants you
to fix her wall
paper, the edges,
are brittle and hard,
split from top
to bottom up
the staircase.
it's a gold flock
design with crests
and medallions
that needed
heavy clay paste
to get it to stick.
it's impossible to
fix thirty years
later. she is
in a wheel chair
and has a crank
attached to a
rail to haul her
up the stairs.
please, she says,
i need to sell this
house, my husband
died seven years
ago. please, try
to fix it. but you
tell her it's
impossible.
it just won't work.
and she begins
to cry. and i
know that it's not
about the wallpaper,
it's more. it's
the age she has
become, alone in
that house, so much
of her life, now
brittle and hard,
unfixable. and so,
i get a ladder,
i get my tools.
i try.