What We Inherit
My husband calls from where he’s cozily
ensconced in folds, creases and discreet
cracks of the aging black leather recliner
we inherited when my mother died.
Forecast’s changed. Now they’re saying
a storm’s due by Saturday. With snow.
Somehow I know, already feel
that foreboding, piercing chill, racking ache
in bones you feel when you’ve passed
the sixth decade mark.
I think of that expensive recliner, how
it almost failed to make it into my mother’s
last-minute will. How she, at ninety-nine,
refused to consider that her weather vane
pointed toward a final storm.
One hundred percent chance, my husband adds.
I want to shout from where I’m standing
at the kitchen sink, Yes, sweetheart, I know—
but hold back, because his hearing’s going
and I don’t want to call his attention
to that fact, to what’s coming his way
and mine.
© Laura Ann Reed
Laura Ann Reed holds a BA in French/Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley and completed Master’s Degree Programs in the Performing Arts, and Clinical Psychology. She and her husband now reside in western Washington. Her work has been anthologized in How To Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope, and has appeared in Blue Unicorn, Grey Sparrow, Macqueen’s Quinterly, The Ekphrastic Review, Verse Virtual and other journals.
The Loch Raven Review 