Cover Photo: a row of six non-matching silver teaspoons, their oddly shaped bowls facing down, against a robin's-egg-blue background
Photograph by Liz West/Flickr

Her Mother’s Spoons

Jealous of objects, that’s what grief makes you.

When we first began to converse, the spoons and I, they told me how sorry they were for my loss, and that they too missed my mother. Not every spoon spoke; perhaps some were embarrassed? Like so many things, not to mention people, they prided themselves on being utilitarian.

Cate's fiction, plays, and book reviews have been published by The Masters Review, Fairy Tale Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Sycamore Review, Bookslut, Slate, Stage Partners, and more. She lives in State College, Pennsylvania.