A Final Visitation
by Barclay Ann Blankenship
On Tuesday, she was still
talking. She asked me to call her
Grandmother, even though that word
felt too stiff to me.
I let her correct my French
while I read A Year in Provence
and imagined the impossible
green and lavender fields blossoming
in her mind. Friday drugged her up,
eyes half moons. I could smell her
dying skin. Her youngest son
had finally killed his liver
and himself alone in a hotel room.
I didn’t tell her. No one should
know their child is dead.
She looked at the empty space
beside my body and asked, no
softness in her voice, where
had Russell gone where
did he go, as though
he’d just left the room.
When she turned her head
towards me it creaked like a door.
Barclay Ann Blankenship is a writer based in North Carolina and a current MFA candidate in poetry at the Bennington Writing Seminars. She received her B.A. in English from Appalachian State University and was awarded Appalachian State's David Hodgin Writing Award for poetry in 2020. Her work has been published in Mystery Tribune, Isele Magazine, The Raven Review, and more. When not writing, she can be found playing guitar, somewhere outside, or on Instagram.
