Richard Luftig Appliance My mother always said you could never have enough stoves in a house. One in the kitchen resuscitating life into leftovers downed in parallel silence with my father watching TV or shaking the evening paper into grudging obedience. Another stove, poised on the back porch alone counting time until Sundays when the running and noise of grandchildren rattling plates in the hutch signaled time to make pasta and sauce until late afternoon smelled full of basil and bread. The other appliances could all go to hell as far as she cared; coffee makers used to hold spare change, and paper bags stacked in the dishwasher in brown sentry rows. But migration of children has shrunk the house like cellophane left overnight in her freezer. Now she waits for a niece to put her on a plane in one city only to be poured out in another like tea from the kettle. She looks out the porthole, reads the daily bible lesson and wonders how she will ever learn to eat her daughter's TV dinners cooked by microwave light.

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