A Teacup's Worth of January Sundays

     Natalie Tombasco

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upon a hum, I housecat around

in the pink and red of my mother’s bed

with mint tea against my thigh.

hurrah! warmth! plump with bliss

as Bowie’s “Modern Love” plays in

a black & white movie & the smell

of cinnamon, coriander, bread rises

from the kitchen. we are tilted in solstice;

daylight glimmers like couscous,

swallowed up behind chimney smoke.

 

how quick the stinking pink goes off

leaving behind a rose-strewn path,

a lukewarm calm. beyond the window,

unto hedges of white, a shovel scrapes

against the sidewalk in sad rhythms

before the dark intrudes. whenever

it’s this cold, I think of a past boyfriend,

a pap smear: the cold clamp which wrenches

one wide-eyed. I still flinch at the unspecial sex.

I think of her miscarriages / before me,

after me / & why we’ve invited in ache.

under dried-out azaleas, through her smoke,

I wonder, as another snow comes to heal us,

if mother ever lies down like this.