 the traffic lights turn red, all the way down Park Avenue. snowflakes are falling and taxi's pile up. Black rubber boots step onto the thick wet snow, walk from the sidewalk to curb and a cab door swings open. Across the street is the Armory with its massive brick face of history taking up the entire block. The bus stop billboards flash slick photos of young men and women with their backs curved and bare. I step onto the slushy street and into her apartment building. Elaine lies in bed. She is sleeping and her mouth is shaped into a perfect O. A quiet hum rises from the small machine blowing cool mist in her direction. Standing in the doorway, I wait as I watch the silver mist travel serpentine then disappears, sucked into the warm dry air. she is resting lightly in her sheets and outside the day floats in a haze of whiteness. All day family and friends slip in and out. Heavy glass doors lead into a lobby of mirror and marble greeted by welcoming doormen who move swiftly--the elevator, gold buttons, the soft pink hallway, apartment 3G with the door ajar. Visitors walk in to the entryway, then more slowly into the bedroom. There is a hospital bed and chairs around it. On the side table sits a small paper cup with a long straw tipped and balanced. From her bedroom window you can see the Armory. She struggles to take a sip of the warm white liquid, “ I feel like a pancake,” she whispers to me. Her body is dead weight. Her feet are swollen and her skin is so thin with multiple shades of purple underneath. You cannot touch her with too much pressure or the skin will tear and her bruises will bleed through. I look out the window and notice that the snow has stopped and I think how lucky she is to have this view of the Armory. “Do you want the painting? Take the painting,” she tells me. Her finger points to the wall, to one of her older paintings. I see the rabbi’s back and he is standing in front of a thick stained glass window. He holds a prayer book. It is realistic and somber and not like her later abstracts that layer the canvas intricately with easy blotches of color. she searches the room while somewhere a train is rocking and eyes are opening from a sleep. It is late afternoon now and her bedroom has become more lively with visitors. They all marvel at the view and how smooth her face looks as it rests on the pillow. Her thin white hair is combed back like a straw halo. “Photos ? Tomorrow. No now.” We put a little lipstick on her, the color she remembered and it is the high point of her day. We all gather around her, smiling. The look in her eyes does not change, but her lips close, present and red.  Denise Mostacci Sklar has had a career as a dancer and now has had the good fortune to discover writing as another way to move through life. She also has the good fortune to study with poet/teacher Marc Olmsted. She has been published in numerous journals including the Aurorean, On the Rusk, Ibbetson Street Press, Wilderness House Literary Review, Gravel, Similar Peaks, Damfino, and Poesy. Denise is from Hamilton, Massachusetts where she lives with her husband and two incredible sons.
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 Fifty years ago, it was the smell of warm sweet dough fried up and made throughout the day that brought lines of people in to this small chain of New England coffee shops. While waiting in line you could glimpse the back room and watch dough being mixed in silver vats, then placed onto trays to be shaped, frosted and decorated. If lucky, your favorite variety will have just run out with a warm, steamy batch quickly on its way. Now the sugary deep fried carbs, all grease and glaze are packaged in a factory in a limited amount and shipped in each morning lasting only until they are sold out. But the pink and orange styrofoam cups of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, watery and weak but oddly still good are worth a trip in once in a while. By mid day there are no long lines in this small town coffee shop, only scattered patrons running in and out and maybe a few people under florescent lights sitting quietly in a white, sterile emptiness. The workers keep the smell of anti bacterial cleanser wafting from the floor and tables by regular cleaning throughout the day in this 2014 FDA approved iconic chain and where there remains a kind of packaged nostalgia. The DD logo appears on billboards, TV, at sports events, its counters found under bright lights at train stations and airports, tucked away in the back of late night convenient stores. It has become a big business and has grown its presence across continents and oceans, staying current decade after decade, coffee and donuts, plus… the familiar colors flash. And still alive, the memory of crowded tables, counter and stools, Sunday mornings and families after church, a dozen donuts, the parking lot filled, teens, motorcycles and Hell’s Angels, a cup of coffee for 60 cents, a cardboard sign with a hand held out, the weekday rush of businessmen and woman, policemen and workers on break, busy and well lit late nights. And retired old men sitting at the counter with an endless cup of coffee poured into a real mug. No one noticed the cigarette butts dropped on the floor, half swept up but still scattered under their feet. Or all the cigarettes in hand with smoke trailing up, mixing with the smell of hot coffee and fresh donuts made ‘round the clock.’ My husband and I pull into the strip mall to get a cup of coffee. It is one of those late, blank afternoons that seem to come at the end of summer, no longer linear but laying on its back, as if time were trying to stand still for a moment. Around the back of the building next to the dumpster, there is a worker on break wearing a hooded sweatshirt. I watch him as he flicks his cigarette and enters the donut shop.  Denise Mostacci Sklar has had a career as a dancer and now has had the good fortune to discover writing as another way to move through life. She also has the good fortune to study with poet/teacher Marc Olmsted. She has been published in numerous journals including the Aurorean, On the Rusk, Ibbetson Street Press, Wilderness House Literary Review, Gravel, Similar Peaks, Damfino, and Poesy. Denise is from Hamilton, Massachusetts where she lives with her husband and two incredible sons.
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