Living Rooms

. for public domain Where we hung our overcoats I don't remember, or at what time winter snow fell late December, I barely recall the living room with the television or radio on, snuggled in a chair, wanting weather of September. The living room, our family's sanctuary, where we prayed for a quickly passing January, we held our tongues from bitter comments, mostly, but one slipped out on occasion, which made for an unpleasant colder February. Spring and Summer came with outdoor body odor, showers and sweat all through the harvest of October. Comments on sore bones and blisters, exchanged among my mother and sisters, kept the conversation lively through November. Our parents have long passed on, as we have passed on, alone, or enduring lives we have created, lording over our own living rooms, to keep them from becoming tombs of the silence that awaits us at the end.