Photo credit: Rebeca G. Sendroiu
A Memory
By Veronica Byrne
My grandmother washed the potatoes in a bucket outside the back-kitchen door
Using the handle of the sweeping brush she swirled them around in the grey water until it turned a rusty
Brown
The misshapen potatoes recently plucked from the ground, let go of their cloaks of clay
Revealing a pinkish hue like a newborn’s skin on a fine September day
My grandmother lifted the zinc bucket
a weight in an eighty-year old’s hands
and discarded the water
black and used, down the outside drain
My grandmother tall and thin with hair silver and long
Took her baptized fare inside before the Angelus rang