These threads are rougher than I last remember.
It means they're stronger, or so I say, they'll last long.
Every morning when she wakes, the sun
is invisibly high, her window long steeped
in its shadow. She shuffles to the table
where I always lay her breakfast, her toast,
her sweetened tea, her long grey napkin.
I lead her to the wicker chair in the back room
and place the box of beads at her side table.
The threads are really twine, because her hands
cannot quite feel the breadth of her old strings.
She fingers a red bead, as large as her cracked thumb,
and tries to bring it through the twine. Her hand
shakes from the effort; she forgets, and lets the bead
fall through from off the other end. I stoop
to pick it up: one of the plastic beads
I found on the colourful low shelves
of a toy shop. Later in the day, past lunch,
past her frequent naps and toilet trips,
when the sun appears again at the window
on the other end of the apartment,
she'd have five strings of red and yellow beads
too short for necklaces, too long for bracelets,
that I'd buy. This ends her labours for the day
and she'd smile, once, and shuffle off to bed.
Each night, while she's asleep, I take the strings of beads,
undo their flimsy knots, and sort them back
into her waiting, empty box.

These threads are rougher than I last remember.
Now, even I forget how many times
she'd threaded those beads, one after the last,
countless day after day.