My buddy asks why they call it independent living,
then answers his own question: “Because it’s not.”

About a hundred geriatric women and seven men
are figuratively connected by yards of yellowed
plastic tubing propagating from hissing oxygen tanks
like a root system they dragged with them from
the old country to yet another barren passage.

A man from Oaxaca trims hedges in two feet of snow.
Half-solved jigsaws splay in dust on card tables.
Tootsie’s in the social hall for the fifth time this month.
A Matagalpan woman slips a brownie into a widow’s
beaded purse. Sittercise, story time, something hurts
every day, and there’s no bazaar at the end of this slog,
though two grizzled girlfriends parade the latest walkers
as if shopping underwater, for what they cannot say.

A mason from Mixco helps a grandma from Yonkers
make solitaire moves on a rococo tray in her bed.
A teacher from Soyapango sets place cards for dinner.
No salt allowed, nothing to die for, so suicides
are beside the point and elevator talk quite civil,
even by those who were vile for their first eighty years.
Sons do stop by, with their sons, for the family day buffet.

Sovereignty and asylum in the eye of the beholder,
here is the junction of two endless goings,
the ego’s laundromat, where rashes spread like wildfires,
but nothing is more contagious than dignity,
much of which radiates from kitchen and garden.
Their names are Rosa, Beatriz, Miguel and Hernán.

So it’s OK not to give a fuck what papers they have
and just thank them for looking after our mothers.