Comfort Care

by Louella Lester

Precisely spaced on the low table by her bed:

a dog-eared novel, beyond her comprehension for weeks, bookmarked fifteen pages in.

an address book, names and numbers she’s no longer able to decipher, beside a landline telephone.

a pen, reminder of her once perfect penmanship, on top of two scribbled squares of paper.

a box of tissue, difficult to reach with her sore arm, next to a cup of water.

As I try to explain the changes signed this morning into her final care plan, I don’t realize my fingers are fluttering about the table, like the wings of a trapped moth, altering her own plan. She cries out and will only settle when I apologize and move each item back to its exact place.


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Louella Lester is a writer and amateur photographer in Winnipeg, Canada. Her work has appeared in New Flash Fiction, Spelk, Reflex Fiction, Vallum, Prairie Fire, Gush: menstrual manifestos for our times (Frontenac House anthology, 2018),  A Girl’s Guide to Fly Fishing: Reflex Fiction Volume Three (Reflex Press anthology, 2020), and Wrong Way Go Back  (Pure Slush -Volume 19 anthology, 2020). Her Flash-CNF book, Glass Bricks (At Bay Press, April 2021) is upcoming. Her blog, Through Camera & Pen, can be found at louellalester.blog.