what remains

by Té V. Smith

By the time the man turned eighty-two, things were already leaving. His wife of sixty years visited every afternoon and introduced herself carefully, as if the word wife might startle him. She told stories, and he listened with cautious attention. While she was speaking, a tune passed through him. Not a song exactly—a rise and fall, a shaping of breath. His lips parted. He hummed a single note, then stopped. The sound seemed to come from elsewhere. She paused, watching him closely. He smiled, apologetic, though he could not say why.

The moment slipped away. The wedding—white lights beneath an awning, the moon caught twice in the lake behind his parents’ house—no longer surfaced. The street where he learned to ride a bike was gone. The one where he raised three daughters followed. Their names had thinned, then disappeared. There was a dog once. A Labrador named Bosco. The dog loved him with such joy that one day, climbing onto his lap, he scratched him. The scar remained, a narrow pale line on his forearm.

Scripture left next. He had once been a lector, his voice steady on Sunday mornings, the Bible worn soft by years of touch. Now Sundays pass without distinction. Without knowing why, his hands folded at his chest. His mouth moved once, shaping a sound that did not arrive. When nothing followed, the hands came apart again, resting in his lap. His brothers—one older, one younger—slipped away. So did the funerals. Two daughters, gone. One to cancer. One to a virus that arrived too fast. He forgot his favorite foods. Forgot the small discipline of disappointment each Cowboys season.

When the doctor entered the room, the man’s body turned on him. His shoulders drew in. The coat was white. The skin beneath it, darker. The doctor stood close to the bed as he spoke. His shoes were polished, the laces neat. The man watched the shoes as if they might move on their own. When the doctor reached for the chart, the man’s breath caught—not sharply, just enough to notice. He kept his eyes lowered until the pen scratched and stopped. He grabbed the armrest. His mouth tightened around something sour. Something in him recognized this much.

*****

The doctor spoke hopeful, then left. The door closed with a soft, careful sound. Later, when the room was quiet again, whatever had tightened inside him slowly released, leaving behind a dull ache he could not place. The nurse returned and asked how he was feeling and found only the ordinary confusion of the day. Later, alone again, his hand rested on his forearm. He did not know why it was there. His thumb moved along the narrow pale line, once, then again. The motion was careful, almost practiced. When it reached the end, his thumb returned to the beginning and followed the line back. Something might open if he kept going. Nothing did. His hand remained.

Photo of Té V. Smith

BIO: Té V. Smith is a Nigerian-American writer and youth advocate. His short fiction has appeared in Tin House, Griffel, Blavity, The Dillydoun Review, and elsewhere. He is a Rhode Island Writers Colony Fellow, Disney+ Reimagine Tomorrow Writer in Residence, Lambda Literary Fellow, and a Tunnel Vision Poetry Prize recipient. Based in New Orleans, he mentors young writers and community leaders, using story as a tool for healing and change.