Elephant on My Back

By MaxieJane Frazier

Six muscled litter carriers deposit my sister’s soul-slipping body in her Happy Place of soft bedding, motivational quotes, and perfectly picked wall colors; meanwhile an elephant sits folded in on itself on my passenger seat because we just left the pharmacy with enough liquid morphine to kill, well, an elephant, but she doesn’t mind because her trunk snakes across my Subaru’s dashboard; she rests her dorsal and ventral fingers over my driving hand sounding just like my dying sister when she whispers, “So this is it?” then after we park, she clambers on my back to climb all twenty-four steps to the Happy Place vigil where together we balance on a fold-out out chair, or stand, or stretch together as one weighted being through the night and day and one last long night before my sister’s haggard, autonomic breathing smooths out until, in that only moment when I’m not looking, sometime a little before 3 a.m., she, the elephant, slips down off my back, though I feel her weigh just the same, still I turn around and catch a glimpse of my sister riding just behind those gray, flapping ears, through the walls of her Happy Place, astride the elephant’s swaying march over the Columbia River.

MaxieJane Frazier, author, editor, and teacher, cares for geriatric equids and other furry beloveds while writing from the Okanogan Highlands of Washington state where she seeks out perfection, mostly in words.

Art by Evva Durkee.