Country Dinners

It was nothing for her to turn out two pies after church. Engraved, her napkin holder implored Bless

O Lord. First came gravy and meat, dandelion leaves dressed. In the lull before dessert, my brothers and I

pushed back from the table—parting Victorian shadows, exploring attic nooks. We sifted through

photos, ran our fingers across her typewriter’s cold metal, watched each key throw its punch.

Her house struck us like a temple to a distant age: cut glass jars and standing clocks. When she called us

to the kitchen, we spooned up crusts beneath a picture of The Last Supper. Everything she did, she did in the name

of that man’s heart red as a wild July strawberry. Finished, we slipped upstairs again—children on the quest

for lost things, trespassing through dust suspended in custard sunlight, finding a soldier’s uniform hung

inside a closet as if, sleeved in wool, our grandfather might any minute climb back down from heaven.