Robin Wright

Thanksgiving Evening in a Friend’s Kitchen
 
In Memory of Debbie Tingley
 
The dishwasher hums, the house nearly empty now. Those still here are napping or watching TV in the next room. Deb and I sit at the kitchen table, talk about her granddaughter’s chubby cheeks between bites of pecan pie and sips of coffee from mugs painted with flowers and balloons. Her son walks into the room wearing the mask he sleeps in for his apnea. Attractive we tell him and laugh, though we shiver like cold air has gripped us by the shoulders when we think of him not breathing. This table we sit at has been around longer than the twenty-five years we’ve been friends and has held holiday turkeys and hams, garlic eggs and hash browns, the slap of cards during games of Spades, tears that fell after her husband’s sudden death. When Deb’s granddaughter awakens with a cry, she brings her into the room, sets her on the table. The baby pats the surface and smiles. We’re delighted it now holds the weight of her new life.
 
 
 
Robin Wright lives in southern Indiana. Her work has appeared in The New Verse News, Last Stanza Poetry Review, Bombfire Lit, Sanctuary, The Drabble, Rat’s Ass Review, As It Ought to Be, One Art, Olney Magazine, Young Ravens Literary Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, and others. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and her first chapbook, Ready or Not, was published by Finishing Line Press in October of 2020.