[stanza][lineate]Father dies during the appetizers. Mother[/lineate]
[lineate indent=3]keeps on eating. How’s work? she says. I[/lineate]
[lineate indent=5]pour more wine. She passes[/lineate]
[stanza][lineate indent=3]just before dessert arrives. Shame,[/lineate]
[lineate indent=5]says the waiter, poised to whisk[/lineate]
[lineate indent=7]away her Eton Mess. Leave it, I say[/lineate]
[stanza][lineate indent=5]and sit there, orphaned, staring at both puddings,[/lineate]
[lineate indent=7]wondering how I am ever going[/lineate]
[lineate indent=9]to lift my spoon again.[/lineate]
Tania Hershman is the author of a poetry chapbook, ‘Nothing Here Is Wild, Everything Is Open’ (Southword, 2016), and two short story collections: ‘My Mother Was An Upright Piano: Fictions’ (Tangent Books, 2012), and ‘The White Road and Other Stories’ (Salt, 2008). Her debut poetry collection and a third short story collection will be published in 2017. Tania is curator of ShortStops, celebrating short story activity across the UK & Ireland, and is working on a hybrid prose/poetry book inspired by particle physics for her PhD in Creative Writing.