"Your Grandfather’s Dresser" by Melissa Ridley Elmes

The dresser top is scarred; bird’s-eye maple 

marred with scratches, a layer of dust fine as 

powdered sugar seeping into the deep grooves 

caused by many moves and careless movers, 

the wood old and dry, crying for a soft rag to 

smooth and soothe its surface with gentle touch 

of healing wax. This is your grandfather’s dresser, 

the one he hand-picked, fifty years in the furniture 

business, for your grandmother to hand down to 

you, and then you gave it to me in the first flush

of our marriage, Something Old, flawless and 

lustrous-polished, well-loved. Yet I am so marred 

myself and careless in that marring, damaged by

my own young years of endlessly moving to 

somewhere new, each time throwing out everything 

and starting over, my bumped and battered psyche 

mistaking surviving for thriving so that I never 

learned to prevent the flaws, the damage wrought 

silently through the years until it’s visible, indelible. 

I didn’t take note of the wear and tear, the sub rosa 

work of years of benign neglect that’s left the 

carefully-crafted and tended the worse for the 

weathering, not from lack of devotion—I love this 

beautiful antique and I love your beautiful soul but 

I don’t know how to properly care for it, I don’t 

know how to properly care for you, I don’t

know how.

Melissa Ridley Elmes is a Virginia native currently living in Missouri in an apartment that delightfully approximates a hobbit hole. Author of two poetry collections, her work has appeared in DarkWinter, Story in 100 Words, Black Fox, PoetrySouth, Belmont Story Review, Star*Line, Dreams and Nightmares and various other print and web venues. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Science Fiction Poetry Association's Elgin, Rhysling, and Dwarf Star awards.