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Tehnuka
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She warned her children
If they were naughty
her eyes would turn to stone
You can have so much fun
with young imaginations.
Inevitably, lost in play,
they came home
mud-spattered-late-to-tea
and with one look fled in horror.
She laughed,
removed grey contact lenses,
and waited for them to return to her
until that night,
sick-stomached that they hadn’t crept back
to peer through the windows,
she found them huddled on the muddy streambank
Rushed to sweep them into her arms,
but they only looked at her
blank,
through river pebbles.
She wept as she carried her poor cold darlings
on the winding forest path
home to their cottage,
apologizing
in words,
tears,
kisses. There,
she reheated soup
and the chilled bathwater.
As they thawed
she hoped their eyes would melt,
recognize her,
and mouths open to spoons at their lips.
Their lips did twitch—
but they only muttered garbled syllables she barely heard
and only to one another.
She wrapped them in towels
Left them staring
as she fetched worn flannel pajamas
And put in her contacts.
Knowing her opaque-eyed,
they finally embraced their mother.
Did it matter to be a stony-gazed family,
if it meant they were together?