Persephone

Around the Table

68 Around the Table little changes. My father never was a talker. So, dead, it’s the same. A little more ashen. My mother is showing off her legs, always a good feature, no veins. It’s August, the peeled off Chinese wallpaper is sucked back as if the past was such a magnet everything once there is metal filings. I want to be thinner tho I am. The death of my sister’s and my closeness dissolves. We still fight but we talk. My mother is waiting for her mother to wriggle from roots and grass, put in her false teeth and struggle up the apartment stairs but she serves 69 the beans and barley soup anyway tho too hot for mid August, even in Vermont. The waterfall is too low for a breeze. My mother’s breasts, once 38 D’s, now are little droopy thimbles but she doesn’t care. She never liked squeezing too much into straps that dug into her shoulders. Like in their graves, my father at the farthest end, as always, too far to read ...