Speak The Blessings

Bless The TablePsalm 23:5

For the woman who feeds everyone and eats on her feet, this shows that God is described as the one preparing a table for her, and hands her one sentence to say over her own plate tonight.

I Eat Standing at the Stove While It Is Still Hot

Messages

A Folder of Forms and a Boy

Day Nine and She Has Not Answered Me

The Screen Door in October

Forty-One Sentences and a Door

Thanked a Thousand Times

We Do Not Have a Table Yet

Two Minutes at the Drop-Off

I Eat Standing at the Stove While It Is Still Hot

Forty Years of Sunday Mornings and I Set Every One of Them

Room Fourteen, First Day, and I Have to Leave

Saturday Mornings Have a Tension and It Is Mine

The Sentence Nobody Read Over You

My Voice Goes Up in That One Room

One Sentence Before Anybody Eats

Twelve Years of Goodbyes and Not One of Them Believes

The One Thing I Told Only Her

Forty-One and Down in the Water

The Name Under the Flour

The Step Does Not Keep Score

I Bring the Whole Day in Through That Door

Twenty Years in the Text, Never Under It

She Is Going Somewhere I Cannot Drive To

I Close the Book and Turn Off the Lamp

Four Years of Blessing That Marriage and It Ended Anyway

The Version of Mama's Last Year That Everybody Believes

Thirty Years Over This House and It Is Exactly As Ordinary As Everyone Else's

He Is Emigrating and I Am Eighty-One

I Blessed Their Marriage Every Night Since I Was Nineteen

Nobody in This House Eats at the Same Time

He Told Me at the Door That He Is Not Coming Back

My Phone Set the Manners of This House

Two Years of Saying It Over Her and the Scan Is the Same

Everything I Say to Him Is a Progress Report

Nobody Lays Hands on the Pastor

Everything I Say to My Son Is a Warning

Eleven Years of Plates on Our Knees

He Said My Name From the Pulpit

Five Children and One Grace

My Phone Is Propped Against the Salt

Fifteen Years of Registers and I Cannot Point at One

Everybody Calls Me Strong

My Brother Did Not Come

The Key in the Door

He Signs the Card With His First Name

I Am Not Sure I Am Allowed To

My Work, Under Another Man's Name

We Talk Every Sunday About Nothing

The Fence He Moved in the Spring of a Bad Year

Alternate Wednesdays, Two Portions of Chips

I Blessed Him Every Visit and He Never Once Answered

I Have Been Going Upstairs for Two Years

Six Months of Logistics and a Wedding on Saturday

He Goes On Monday and I Have the Weekend

A Careful House Is Not the Same as a Peaceful One

Four Years of Calls He Does Not Take

She Is Getting the Job She Kept Me Out Of

Everybody in This House Checks My Face First

Everyone We Know Heard His Version First

Twenty Years of Other People's Words

The Family Is in the Corridor and I Am the One in Here

My Uncle Had No Soft Words

Nineteen Years and an Email at Four Forty-Seven

Supper in a Lay-By Five Nights a Week

The Cautionary Tale at the Christening

Eleven Years and He Still Says He Does Not Believe

My Brother Is Getting on That Bus

All Week They Gave Me Numbers

She Asked to Go Home to Die

The Middle Son Pours the Tea

The Word They Use for Him at School

Two Years of Speaking Over a Friend Who Is Still in Bed

Hours Left and Eleven Years of Not Speaking

Tray Three, Hospital Canteen, Half Past Six

Nine Years of Blessing Them and the Room Is Emptier

I Am the One Leaving

The Boy I Blessed Every Thursday

His Name Is in the Newsletter Again

When I Am Worried This House Goes Quiet