every morning my mother chose his clothes.
laying them flat on the freshly made bed.
since his second stroke took part of him, every morning she did it.
because he could not solve the puzzle of buttons.
the mystery of tying shoes, or remember
how to walk out a door.
so my mother helped.
because she remembered everything.
and with automatic hands
tended to the chores,
her eyes staring out at something else;
narrowing against the morning’s glare coming through
the kitchen window,
she helped the man she had married half a century ago
remember how to keep shirts together
and things in their place.
- Gilbert Arzola
Winner of the 2019 Passager Poetry Contest and the 2021 Rattle Poetry Chapbook Contest, Gilbert Arzola has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Award. His full-length poetry collection is Prayers Of Little Consequence (Passager Books, 2019) and his poetry chapbook is The Death of a Migrant Worker (Rattle, 2021). His work has appeared in The Notre Dame Review, Palabra, Tipton Poetry Journal, CRAFT, The Acentos Review, and Rattle among other literary journals. The second son of a former migrant worker, he lives with his wife in Valparaiso, Indiana.