The Wedding Reception, North Country

My seat was at the table
with the rednecks from Alabama
I didn’t know;
talking guns, hunting, in their
southern twang.
I was, with my northern, educated
smugness, melting like
a hot knife in warm butter.

Brenda Lee sat next to me,
and shared her story
about the adult daughter
she has at home who’s slowly dying.
You know that same kind of brain tumor
Joe Biden’s son died from?
I have a neighbor checking on her,
I don’t leave home very often.
I didn’t tell her about my own grief;
how, between wedding toasts
and the father of the bride taking that dance,

Brenda Lee was more like me,
if I’d had courage.

There I was, for a few brief hours,
when all our differences seemed to
slide beneath the tablecloth
of womanhood,
as she poured out her heart,
with the second glass of wine
her husband said she could have.
Tears made the mascara
run down her face.
I reached over with a tissue
and wiped that creamy white
southern skin of hers.

Grief and motherhood
floated around us
in embryonic fluid.

I left Brenda Lee
at the table,
reached out to
take her hand,
say goodbye,
this apparition of myself—
someone not to leave behind—
told her how much
I enjoyed her company.

I’m a hugger,
she said,
and threw her arms around me
pulling me in
close enough
to smell the rose perfume on her neck.
And I could take a brief look
over her shoulder
and not turn away
from what she had opened
in me.

Abigail Warren lives in Northampton, Massachusetts and teaches at Cambridge College. Her work has appeared in Hawai’i Review,Tin House Reels, The Delmarva Review, Serving House Journal, among others. Her essays have been published in SALON and The Huffington Post. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her book, Air Breathing Life (Finishing Line Press, 2017) was nominated for the Massachusetts Book Award, and her second collection, Inexact Grace (Regal House Publishers, 2020) was a finalist for the Terry J. Cox Award.