Written by Emily Hall
Take something that reminds you of him, my aunt says. We stand, waist-deep, in Pop-Pop’s life. Beer cans lean on frozen dinner trays. Scratched vinyl records peek out of sleeves. Cigarette smoke is settled into the walls, and if I close my eyes, I know I’ll still hear his voice. Whistling women and crowing hens always come to bad ends, he reminds me, from wherever he is now.
Aunt Deb folds a few of Pop-Pop’s checkered shirts and sets them near his recliner.
Sunlight glints along the magnifying glass on a table. I pick it up by its translucent handle. Every morning, he’d use it to read the newspaper, his flaking mouth sounding out all the words, while I sat across from him, silent.
Girls are just useless split tails, he’d boast whenever he thought I deserved it. He’d let the words fall hard on the floor, the same way he’d let his hand fall when his old cat, Misty, would wrap around his leg.
You gonna take any of it with you? Deb asks, hauling a hamper from the closet.
I look around one last time.
No, I say, shaking my head. I want it all to stay here.
.
Emily Hall’s prose has appeared, or is forthcoming, in places such as Passages North, 100 Word Story, Gooseberry Pie Lit, The Disappointed Housewife, Blood Orange Review, Wild Roof Journal, Short Reads, and Cherry Tree. A member of The NBCC, her book reviews have appeared in Necessary Fiction, The Portland Review, Heavy Feather Review, The Washington Independent Review of Books, and MER. She’s a prose editor for Pictura Journal, has a PhD in contemporary Anglophone fiction from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and lives in NC with her husband.