https://sweetlit.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Sharon-Lee-Snow-The-Kids-Dont-Want-Our-Stuff.mp3

The Kids Don’t Want Our Stuff

Throw away your antique chair, crushed
velvet cradling grandma’s slight
skeleton like a pearl—You
balanced carefully
on her ancient unbending
knees. Give away
the bric-a-brac, porcelain
shepherds lined up like stone soldiers
in a king’s damp tomb. Sell
your dead mother’s cocktail ring, too
large for any finger to bear. You’ll never
find a place for it, but try
anyhow. Catch the woman
from the antique store, gauging
your lot of heirloom
plates, calculating profit as she offers
you a deal. Take
the money, wrap up the blue
bone china cup from England—your favorite–
tiny violets hand-painted
around the rim a century before
you were born. Watching your fingers
shadowed through the other side,
ashes of bones–A substance so fine, you can
see all your past.


A Pushcart nominee, Sharon Lee Snow (Twitter: @sharonleesnow Facebook: @sharonleesnow) teaches writing courses as a Visiting Professor at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Her award-winning short stories, creative nonfiction, and poetry have been published in Thimble Literary Magazine, New Plains Review, South 85, Typehouse, Gulf Stream, and other journals. Her favorite sweet is chocolate mousse.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here