Come in, she calls, and I find her 
	drinking that tea she steeps 

and steeps until the leaves 
	disappear into darkness—

the way it was made
	in Odessa. She doesn’t speak. 

Should I reach across the tablecloth, 
	lay my fingers on her sleeve? 

After all, she is my grandmother. 
	Although she raised a daughter 

who won’t hold me, who told me 
	no one held her on a lap 

when she was small. Fidgeting 
	in my chair, I stare 

at her shaking hands. How 
	they cradle a china cup. 

This woman who escaped darkness 
	with a husband, but no suitcase 

of belongings. A woman for whom 
	“belonging” is a foreign word. 

She sips her tea, takes a hard candy 
	from a jar, places it on her tongue. 

As if to sweeten 
	what she consigns to silence. 

Laura Ann Reed

taught modern dance and ballet at the University of California, Berkeley prior to working in the capacity of leadership development trainer at the San Francisco headquarters of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Her poetry has been anthologized in How To Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope and is forthcoming in the anthologies SMEOP (HOT) and The Wonder of Small Things: Poems of Peace and Renewal. Her poems have appeared in Loch Raven, MacQueen’s Quinterly, One Art, SWWIM, The Ekphrastic Review, The Grey Sparrow, and Willawaw, among other journals. Her chapbook, Shadows Thrown, is forthcoming from Sungold Editions in February 2023. A San Francisco Bay Area native, Laura resides with her husband in western Washington.

Author’s website: https://www.lauraannreedpoet.com/