The Caretaker

I open my eyes but can’t see. My caretaker’s a frail woman who dances to jazz music in the living room, brushes her waist against my arm when she brings food, and reads me the same story about a man who wins the lottery and dies the next day.

As I fall asleep with socks on, a butcher with drooping cheeks arrives. He frames his bloodstained white shirts in the hallway. Then he sits on his rocking chair, petting his German shepherd and humming a tune his mother used to when he was a child.

I wake up to a feather being stroked across my forehead. My caretaker says it’s a cure for sadness and that delicate things on skin release tension. She brushes it a few more times, back and forth, and blows against my dark eyes.

She wants to gift me a new life. One where I can see the bright blue of her pleated skirt that match her nails, the torn cover of her favorite collection of short stories, the salted rim of her lemonade glass. She laughs about her shoes. She bought them from a thrift store and h…