Patricia Prime

A World Beyond the Sky

“You could do your exercise here,” says my friend Catherine’s mother, Molly, pointing down the rest home corridor. “Can you help me find my room?” asks a frail woman in a wheelchair. Catherine steers her through the door accidently trapping her left arm between doorjamb and wheelchair. “She’s a hundred,” says Molly triumphantly, “broke her ankle last week.”

Beyond the veranda two large fluffy white dogs scare up the ducks from the pond. An elderly man trains his binoculars on the animals. “I’ll lay in wait for them one day and give them a hell of a fright,” he says angrily. “The owner doesn’t even have a plastic bag with her.”

through the window
a flight of mallards
in formation