How We Get the Final Word

by Laura Ann Reed


These bookshelves of voices
pleading to be heard
remind me of my mother
who asked before she died
if I’d given any thought to writing.
You express yourself so well,
she said, you really should. That shocked me. 
I’d never had the slightest chance
to express myself with her. She’d cut me off
or finish my sentences and move to another topic
when I’d try to tell her how I saw the world.
But she asked again
and I said, Yes, that’s my plan.
I kept my answer brief, so she couldn’t interrupt.
Oh, Laura, that makes me glad,
she said. A second shock.
When was she ever pleased
about the steps I took to create a life apart from her?
What do you intend to write,
she asked. I paused a moment,
then said, My memoirs.
The room where we were sipping tea
filled with stillness, like the aftermath of earthquakes
or tidal waves. I should have kept it to myself,
my plan to write about her once she died.
I didn’t mean to tell her, but I couldn’t hold it back—
the fact I’d get the final word.


* * * * *

"How We Get the Final Word" was originally published in Verse-Virtual.

Laura Ann Reed received a dual BA in French/Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley, and subsequently completed Master’s Degree Programs in the Performing Arts and Psychology. She was a dancer in the San Francisco Bay Area prior to assuming the role of Leadership Development Trainer at the San Francisco headquarters of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. She and her husband now reside in western Washington. Her work has been anthologized in How To Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope, and has appeared or is forthcoming in MacQueen’s Quinterly, The Ekphrastic Review, and Willawaw, among other journals.