Grandma’s Silence
A needlepoint flower drops
its bloom and grandma sits
there with a magazine.
She looks up at me without
taking off her glasses:
Have you found
a replacement yet,
she asks me slowly,
another son
to take your place, for
I do deserve
to have a son.
The curtain doesn’t shiver
and the phone refuses to
ring; we stare
at the silence growing up
between us: a dust covered
but thornless rose.
© Paul Sohar, 2011