It's Still Life

Arvet i Grönt – The Inheritance in Green

The bowl was always there before I was, there resting in my grandmother’s lap like a second sun, heavy with stories it refused to spill.

Her fingers never rushed, “Top but never tail, Brigid,” she’d say, “that would be a waste.”

Grandmother’s hands taught mine to listen—not just to green beans, trimming tops ‘though never tails, but listening to pauses in conversation, to birds correcting the morning, how heat paints meaning into silence.

“Don’t be afraid of the old ways,” … and so I memorised the cards as if they were my times tables, stitched every implied meaning into the breeze between chores, slipped it into every snipped green bean, “The death card never means death, never,” she said, “it’s about not resisting change.”

And Grandmother’s summer porch listened as I learned how green can hum like memory, and how hands can remember, even when the heart is still catching up.

And then came the day— when her bowl became mine.

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Written for Denise’s Six Sentence Story including the word “trim”.  Some artwork is created using Midjourney AI, and is identified as such in the ALT text or captioned. Images are copyright and not to used without permission, which I willingly give when asked, and when not for commercial use. Imagery and poems/prose ©Misky 2006-2025.