Flash Nonfiction by Susan Epstein
PERFECT SQUARES

My mother takes a tissue from the box and folds it into a perfect square, again and again, as if sealing something in. I’m with her most days now. All day. I watch. One goes up each sleeve. One in each pocket. If we pass a tissue box in the family room, she pulls one and folds it. Leaving the bathroom, she turns her walker and reaches for another. Sometimes she keeps the folded square in her hand while gripping the walker. I pry it from her fingers and tuck it into her pocket. Only then do I wonder: How do I take a tissue? I think I crumple it, use it, throw it away. At night, we empty her pockets: a small pile of perfect squares. They go into the bathroom trash. Then she pulls one more from the box, folds it carefully, and slips it beneath her pillow. 

Susan P. Epstein is a writer and retired psychotherapist in Connecticut. Her work has appeared in Psychotherapy Networker, Beyond Words Magazine, Little Old Lady Comedy, Paragraph Planet, and Gathered Words Anthology, with forthcoming work in Months to Years. Her writing often explores caregiving, memory, family, and the emotional lives we carry quietly.

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