Joy Hallinan
Ungreeted
She waits in the room with the television on a show no one is watching and gets agitated when someone else is sitting in her chair after a breakfast of runny eggs and burnt toast. The table is decorated today with a yellow plastic cloth, and pink petunias with dirt covered roots in a plastic cup without water. Her hands hover up and down above her lap. A caregiver places an old birthday card in front of her. Someone across the hall keeps repeating, “Can you call my daughter?”
left alone
the amaryllis pod
dribbles
black paper seeds
until empty
About the Author
Joy Hallinan is the co-founder with Tom Painting of Samara, a haiku group in Atlanta, Georgia. She is a not-for-profit administrator working with vulnerable populations, an artist, and a former ballroom dancer with bad knees. Her haibun has appeared in Frogpond, #FemkuMag, contemporary haibun online, and Drifting Sands. Her tanka prose has appeared in contemporary haibun online and Drifting Sands.