The silverware in the Carnation Café
had the thinnest metal
of any silverware I’d ever seen
I was surprised that the pieces we’d been given
wrapped in a napkin
weren’t bent
My wife and I were out for brunch
It was our forty-third wedding anniversary
but it wasn’t a celebratory meal
My wife seemed to have forgotten
what day it was
I’d bought her a card but hadn’t given it to her yet
The card said:
Here’s to another year of adventure
The biggest adventure we’d planned for the year
was two spinal surgeries for her
one for the upper spine
one for the lower
We hoped that the surgeries would eliminate the
considerable pain she’d been suffering
for some years
and the numbness in her arms and legs
and her difficulty getting out of bed in the morning
It was painful watching her struggle to the bathroom
I tried to be out of the house before she woke up
so I wouldn’t have to witness it
I got up at five a.m. and went to my gym
It was called Planet Fitness
and it was only ten dollars per month
but I didn’t even have to pay that
because I’d turned 65
and got the Silver Sneakers benefit
I’d get on the elliptical machine
and pedal for sixty minutes
as my cardiologist had told me to:
an hour a day, six days per week
at my target heart rate
between 112 and 120 beats per minute
That and my statin drug
would keep my arteries clean
My arteries had been 90% blocked before my triple bypass three years ago
I’d been in danger of having a major heart attack
and would have if I hadn’t moved from
rural Michigan to Denver
replacing an incompetent doctor
with a really good one
My previous doctor had looked at my cholesterol level and said
Maybe lose a little weight. And exercise more
He’d said the same thing every year
for four or five years
My new general practitioner said:
Let’s get you a carotid ultrasound
The ultrasound showed significant clogging
Then a stress test revealed the danger I was in
That GP saved my life
In Planet Fitness I pedaled the elliptical machine
and watched young women do squats
at the stations in front of me
They were developing their lower body strength
Women naturally have much better lower body strength
than upper body strength
but you rarely saw a woman working seriously on her upper body
which was counterintuitive to me:
Wouldn’t a person want to work on remediating their weakness?
I watched them squat under the weight
then rise to a full standing position
and admired their efforts
I knew that even if my wife’s surgeries were successful
that she would not join a gym
would not lift weights to improve the strength
of either her upper
or lower body
but maybe she’d regain her ability
to walk around Sloane’s Lake (three miles)
or at least the lake at Crown Hill Park (a mere mile)
Even that had become beyond her capabilities
Meanwhile I was hiking fourteeners (peaks over 14,000 feet)
I’d make my way up the rock-strewn trails
of the Rocky Mountains and
at the top
I’d stop and survey the scene:
lesser mountains below
some snow-peaked
blue sky and increasing clouds
I’d get down before the afternoon thunderstorms
made the heights dangerous
Meanwhile my wife was stretched out on her divan
eating orange slices and chocolate truffles
watching British mysteries and
police procedurals
She preferred programs produced by the BBC
and those based in Scotland
because she loved the scenery
and the Scottish brogue
I could never watch those shows
without the benefit of subtitles—
otherwise I couldn’t figure out what they were saying
In the Carnation Café
my senior breakfast arrived
It was only $6.29, including coffee
quite a deal
It was my first time there
I had often noticed how busy it always was
and now I knew why
I picked up my fork
again impressed by the thinness of the metal
and thought: I can’t bend this fork with my mind
but could bend it easily with two fingers
It wouldn’t even take much effort
I could bend it casually
like swatting a fly
I wondered how much silverware
the Carnation Café lost to
that kind of vandalism
and concluded:probably very little

Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois has had over fifteen-hundred of his poems and fictions appear in literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad. He has been nominated for numerous prizes, and. was awarded the 2017 Booranga Writers’ Centre (Australia) Prize for Fiction. His novel, Two-Headed Dog, based on his work as a clinical psychologist in a state hospital, is available for Kindle and as a print edition. His poetry collection, THE ARREST OF MR. KISSY FACE, will be published by Pski’s Porch Publications in early 2019. He lives in Denver, Colorado, USA.