Chinese Checkers
Hortensia Anderson
 

"Do you know how to play Chinese Checkers?" great aunt Maude asks. "I love Chinese Checkers" I say. She smiles and a girl sparkles in her blue eyes.

I lay her prize antique board with the hexagonal star across a table. As we put the vintage glass marbles in their half-moon slots, she jumps.

"Oh," her voice wavers, "I lost a green one." "We'll borrow an aggie," I say. "Let me fetch your pills."

I return with her five o'clock tea and silk bed jacket, without the aggie. Yet somehow the lustrous orb found its way to the carved teak star.

"Do you know how to play Chinese Checkers?" great aunt Maude asks. "I love Chinese Checkers." I say. She smiles and the girl sparkles in her blue eyes.

gathering flowers
she tells me to remember
the forget-me-nots

Hortensia Anderson is the author of numerous chapbooks as well as a volume of poetry, TRUST (fly-by night press, 1995). Currently, she serves as haibun editor for moonset, the newspaper. She lives precariously on dialysis in nyc's east village with her bengal leopard cat, Camellia and faithful companion, Pain.

Copyright 2009: Simply Haiku