at the kitchen table

 

I learned all of life's most important lessons

sitting at the kitchen table.

Staring at the faded lazy susan whirling as the world crumbled around me. 

I wonder if this is why i eat on the couch these days. 

--- 

There was always the abandoned yellow house on Santa Maria avenue

A thin layer of dust settled on the yellow pine floors

and a threadbare blanket strewn atop it

stolen from the overflowing basket in our family room.

No one noticed it was gone

& why should they? 

My mother existed in phone calls beginning with an automated voice

And my father existed only in grief masked by home cooked meals and questions about my day. 

That floor was littered with remnants of kids like me

- lighters, the packaging for Banana Smash Swisher Sweets, pages torn from college rule notebooks

Myself in the form of black paint on the decaying walls.

I wonder about that house now

and the kids like me who left parts of themselves there to die.

---

Like a toddler, I struggle with the permanence of things.

When you leave the room, will you still love me? 

If these thoughts leave my head will you think of me the same?

I'm slowly teaching myself the concept of love

searching for things that might hold it better

than I do.

It is in the dough rising on my grandmother's countertop,

in the leftovers in the pan,

in the wilted peonies you bought me two months ago. 

Are you hungry?

If I make you something, will you eat?

Can we sit together at the kitchen table?

---