Winter Light

by Laura Ann Reed


Splashes of February light dazzle
on the garden path. At a window,
I bask in a rare moment
of wholeness—not thinking
of broken things. For no reason,
I call to my husband, Do you know
the date?

When he shouts back,
February 11^th that hollow place
between my ribs, below my heart
caves in. My dad. Today he’d be 108.

I think of the way he held me
in his lap and read aloud
from my favorite Golden Book:
Doctor Dan, The Fix-It Man.
How I loved that big black bag
of Band-Aids for bleeding knees,
those tubes of glue for damaged dolls.

The last time I saw my father, his face
lay half-hidden under an oxygen mask,
his eyes no longer taking in the sun
outside a window streaked with dust.
He wanted me to help him lift the mask
so he could speak. But I shook my head,
afraid he wouldn’t confess that he allowed
the bond between us to crack and shatter
like river ice. His unspoken words, now
tiny fish forever stilled— their shadows
below the frozen surface of water almost
visible in winter light.


* * * * *

Laura Ann Reed, a San Francisco Bay Area native, taught modern dance and ballet at the
University of California, Berkeley before working as a leadership development trainer at the San
Francisco headquarters of the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Her work has
appeared in numerous journals and anthologies in the United States, Canada, and Britain. She is
the author of the chapbook, Shadows Thrown (2023). Laura and her husband live in the Pacific
Northwest.