We sat in the long, rectangular room with the long, rectangular table topped with faux marble. Outside the eighth-floor window, we could see the frozen, snow-covered lake. The serious young lawyer wrote my responses in little scribbles to inscribe my will. I watched words and numbers gather in display on his snowy-white pages, my life seemingly reduced to something small and slight. I went home feeling diminished, home to a night’s restless sleep. Of course, March will return to raise the golden crocuses with their rich inner lives. And if indeed I have few assets in the companies of commerce and the company of others, why should I let that freeze my will?
Copyright 2020 by Brian Dean Powers
Published in the Winter/Spring 2021 issue of Bramble
Photo by the author