I began this piece during the Girls Write Now Poetry workshop, The Economy of Words. I had broken my mother’s crystal bowl that morning and was devastated by the loss, which was about so much more than a bowl.
I took the bowl.
When you were clearing out your home
After raising four of us, and a husband,
giving things away
moving where you wouldn’t move your own mother.
Things we got so used to seeing,
we stopped looking.
There would be just the one room for you now
And so much to be rid of.
I took the bowl.
Crystal and heavy,
wide-rimmed.
Patterned edges,
rough on the hand, like pineapple skin.
Once, it held clementines in season
Sometimes grapes.
When we were adventurous, kiwis.
Sometimes just the sun, which bounced and broke into colors,
Spotlights on the wall
for the dining room chairs that I played beneath on Thanksgivings
Or the hallway mirrors where I spied on you from the steps.
Or even tiny teacups held in the bureau.
I took the bowl.
And never bothered to ask.
Where it came from
A wedding gift, a sale, a thank-you from guests who overstayed.
What it meant to you
I took the bowl
And left it on my kitchen counter
where there was no sun.
It held unopened mail
The plastic cover for avoiding microwave splatter
Dead double As that felt wrong in the trash
Some stamps, the Forever kind.
I never looked.
Until today when I reached for the cumin
And the pepper mill tumbled down.
The clash assaulting my ears before I dared look,
tiny peppercorn beads running across the floor like newborn roaches
I swept the pieces together
the batteries, bits of blood in my palms.
I took the bowl.