Splitting the Assets

The “Mom” coffee cup with a smiley-face sun
and fat apostrophe shaped clouds
sits on this table while the highlighter
screeches across another page.

I once stood holding its edge
with a man at the other end,
saying, do you like it here
or here?

From it a toddler picked first Cheerios
with finger tips like salad tongs.
It later found home where it now serves
as desk in this attic office retreat.

I want to pat it, smooth the cherry wood,
to say I’m sorry I said
I’d cut you in half before I’d lose you
as I ran to the shed for a chainsaw.

Inspiration

You are the folds of Georgia O’Keefe.
While stretched canvas pleads
New Mexican canyons,
she strokes red canna
and calla lily
inspired by your pink layers,
a morning glory.

When She is Nine

I just started to see her as pieces.

Today I am waiting for 4:35
when I can stare
at her right eyebrow.

Yesterday it was her upper lip
that I stroked with my paintbrush eyes
and tomorrow I will start on
her left eye.

I have already glanced at it
and I know
it has lashes like mine
but is colored by the genes
of her deceased father.

I expect I will greet him there
with my forgiveness and old love.

Kitchen Table

With six of us, it had benches on either side,
chairs at the head and foot.
We aligned three on each bench,
parents in each of the two thrones.
For weekly pork chops and lasagna
I always had elbows in my ribs,
butter from Julie’s bread
making its way onto my sleeve.

But when I could
I would sprawl on a bench,
cool in the summer A/C
on my bare scrawny legs.
They would remind me of the therapist
who said I stuff things.
Christy, you are being a clam, just talk to us.
With tears and convulsing shoulders, I’d repeat,
I just don’t know, I just don’t know.
At the end I would wind up
ear to my dad’s heartbeat.
He would pet my black hair and say Shhhh.

I was the producer of dramas,
the screenwriter and director.
To sit on the cool bench,
no shared DNA on either side of me,
no butter on my sleeve,
was the like having her uterus all to myself
with his hand on her belly as I kicked.