AT THE GOODWILL, AT UMPQUA

Her name was Rema, darkly beautiful, proudly Palestinian
I watched her dig in the piles at the thrift store
hands reaching/touching/rejecting
moving on

She pulls a bright blue bowl with flowers on it from the back of
the bottom shelf, holding and turning it in front of her eyes, and says
in a whisper “I don’t need this,” as she puts it
in her basket

I stand and watch her, her grief and my grief a stale-smelling
blanket around both of us, and
I think of the dig at Umpqua

We settled in around the site, each morning finding our place
in the grid with brush and spade, scraping and brushing away
layer on layer

grain by grain of centuries, until the tease of an edge or a curve
emerges, our hands becoming the tools to brush dust away until
we lift it in front of our eyes, turning and watching
with wonder the things that have once been part of lives
now gone

We pay - she for the bowl and two ceramic candle holders,
and I for a soft blue scarf and a picture frame to hold
another memory

and we go to the car, settling in for whatever is next,
thinking of the places we’ll find in our homes for
the things we don’t need

Judith Mikesch-McKenzie has traveled much of the world, but is always drawn to the Rocky Mountains as one place that feeds her soul. She loves change –– new places, new people, new challenges –– but honors a strong connection to the people and places of her roots. Writing is her home. She is a recent winner in the Cunningham Short Story Contest and the Tillie Olsen Short Story Contest. Her work has been published in Who Are We?, the Tishman Review, Rogue River Review, Mountains and Lake, Works in Progress, The Poetic Bond X, The Wild Roof Journal, and Halcyone Magazine.