Reflection— by cheryl weaver

Artwork by Susan Cohen

My ex-husband is in a house (a box) in a place (a bungalow) he’s never been to before. He’s visiting for the holidays.

            I had asked our sons if they would get him from their grandmother.

“I think he should be with us for the holidays,” I said.

            They both looked down. They see addiction everywhere.

I continued. “I used to make him promise to spend every New Year’s Eve with me. We should be together as a family this year, for old time’s sake.”

They looked back up at me. “Sure,” my older son said. “We’ll get him from Nonna.”

**

My ex-husband threatened me with something every day. He’d say, You owe me, and hold his arms aloft to frame his head in a giant U. You–arms up–owe–arms circling overhead, fingertips touching–me–arms dropped, thumbs pointing against his chest. His cigarette held his lips at constant attention, ash curling and smoke winding up his nostrils. His arms clean, unpunctured.

I’d light another cigarette and sigh. Waiting. Unsure. Expectant.

**

It’s starting to snow outside, fresh enough to cover the ground with endless white and I’m  home at an unusual hour midweek. The holidays have passed but my dead ex-husband is still here, ashes boxed and bagged in a velvety purple sack atop a gold-embossed black cabinet in my living room. The cabinet’s matching oval mirror hangs above, bordered in a long rectangle of cherry wood. The wood frames my reflection, an oval capturing my face as my fingertips brush against the container housing what remains of a body that exists only in my imagination. 

Cheryl Weaver is a writer and teacher in Buffalo, N.Y., and she is currently pursuing her MFA in creative nonfiction at Bay Path University. Her book reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in Conversations, a publication of the Margaret Fuller Society, Heavy Feather Review, and The Literary Review. She earned her PhD in English at the University at Buffalo in 2023.