Poems and Stories by M. Bernstein

Artwork by Kristina Crisman 2/10/2026 Death List The quarterly list arrives, a grim reaper’s decree, I am the one who opens the locked box of me. Five years of medication failing to hold, learning to cope as the stories unfold. With music and audiobooks, I build new walls. Distraction is my shield, lest I should stumble and fall into the well of what-ifs, I cannot descend. So I mark the dead names, and I close out the end. I no longer wonder if they died alone, Or if they were held by a family grown. I do not look up the reports of the slain, The news of the murder, the sorrow, the pain. Did you know, there’s a code for it? X90 to X99. A clinical line in the ledger of time. C codes are for cancers that eat from within, my heart breaks for youth where the battle begins. I hope that the older ones lived lives that they chose, and that peace has found them as the last chapter closes. I’m glad that their suffering is finally done, and happiness waits for the ones who have won. U07.1 is the...

I drag my pink and white block crochet blanket down the hall. The goal, the back yard, where my covered wagon was waiting. The fun of playing pretend, is that anything can become anything. Today, the picnic table is to be my covered wagon. I skip over to the wagon, feeling the cool grass on my bare feet. My red flowered bonnet hanging around my neck and my braids swinging back and forth. I drape the blanket over the last part of what is to be my wagon, having covered it with other blankets. Pooh bear and Mary doll are already under the table, waiting for our adventure to begin. With my bonnet on, I would wander the backyard, picking wheat to make bread. I would gather those weeds that looked like wheat and then rub the tops between my hands. The seeds falling onto a large step brick, for me to grind them down with a rock. Just like the Indians did, never enough to make anything, after all it was just pretend. I pick strawberries from the garden, pretending I found a wild be...

  Pa I stare at the two black and white photographs. One a pinhole of a building I spent four years of my life in. The other death brought back to life, a tree long ago cut down. Both professionally framed. Missing the man that took pride in them enough to display in his office. Click, Click The smell of Old Spice aftershave mixed with cigarettes. Both faded over time. A deep baritone voice lost to the winds of time. Cuddling in big strong arms, one marked with ink of the Navy. The feeling of safety and love, gone on the Ides of March. Click, Click My small hand, engulfed in his giant hand. The Lord's Prayer falling from his lips. I smiled up at him, repeating the words with him. Squeezing his hand. Him answering back with three squeezes, I love you. Click, Click I miss our patriarch, Pa, the glue of the family. The man with a firm handshake, that always won. “Always have a firm handshake, it’s how people will judge you.” I warned my first husband and my second husban...