shot glass
title
Issue # 8 September 2012
"... brevity is the soul of wit ..."
- William Shakespeare

Nancy Scott


 

Canvas

The wall phone hangs silent, its orange-
tipped antenna reproaching me. I haven't

spoken to Aunt Sylvia since Easter.
She's eighty-three. What if she's dead?

The attic on Quimby filled with stacked canvas:
oils, pastels, collages, loaned to museums,

never for sale. These are my children, she said.
How can I part with them?

As a child, I spent every July with my aunt.
She called me princess, favored me above others,

until my father—her younger brother—died.
Unlike canvas she could breathe life into

with color and line, I'd become a reminder
of what skill cannot capture.