Legacy
By David B. Prather
July 15, 2023
July 15, 2023
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The yellow cream pitcher
with cherries painted on one side sits where my great grandmother left it on the window ledge over the kitchen sink. The maple-wood bookshelf my grandfather built holds much more than books in the half-light of the living room. The last Christmas card my grandmother sent me is tucked into the corner of my bedroom mirror. It’s been there two years now. Afterlife is a matter of things left behind, a few photographs passed down and stored in a box, pictures of me as a child with dishwater hair, proof of life beyond this moment. Sometimes, I think of sending trinkets and treasures to everyone I know, write them notes they can tuck away in journals. Then when they go back to those pages, my words fall unexpectedly, as though I’d never left. |
David B. Prather is the author of We Were Birds (Main Street Rag Publishing, 2019), and his second collection, Bending Light with Bare Hands, will be published by Fernwood Press. His work has appeared in many publications, including Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, Potomac Review, Cutleaf, The Meadow, Sheila-Na-Gig, etc. He studied acting at the National Shakespeare Conservatory, and he studied writing at Warren Wilson College.