Blue Bowl
Years I sat on a relative’s shelf, behind a crisscross of mahogany veneer and glass—wedding gift— an ornament no one in the household understood—revered as gift but puzzled over.
So unlike the blankets, beds, and sheets which, I learned from listening during Sunday suppers, had all burned to ash one May afternoon. Now, she has the space, she’s finally brought me home.
Still, I don’t nest among the heavy mugs donated from the nuns’ kitchen, or with the pots and their ill-fitting lids the Protestants boxed up for this Catholic family in need. Instead, I perch alone in the glass bow-front cabinet a neighbor gave, whose lower shelves house gold-rimmed, plates, given by another neighbor and reserved for holidays. Even then, she leaves me empty. I am too heavy for a child to lift, too shallow to serve this many.
Thank God for Old Upright along the wall. Summer Saturdays, he jangles on and on, as a sister pounds out tunes—her strong left hand and polio-weak right hand mostly finding the right keys. The adults all sing along while children in cotton plisse pajamas wander in and out, stealing gum from aunties’ purses—aunties stealing kisses in return.
She sings best. Her bell voice rings against Bow-Front‘s glass, and on my shelf inside, I vibrate. So, we trade her decibels back and forth like shuddering cards, Bow-front and me.
He watches her across the room, his back to the open window to catch a breeze, ice sinking in his scotch. Now and then she catches his raised eyebrow and crooked grin and smiles back. In those moments I almost feel that I belong.
Come morning all that music’s thinned to milky quiet—birds in the woods the only songs—air inside heavy with the ghosts of Lucky Strikes and hi-ball glasses unstuck from Old Upright’s hood—ashtrays dropped in suds.
Once, passing through the room, she stopped—even opened Bow-front’s door and stroked my cobalt cheek. I swear she meant to take me down and hold me. The way she stared, I swear she forgot for that split second she had ever had to run, dragging her children by their wrists out of the fire—
Miriam O'Neal
Miriam O'Neal's poetry, reviews, and articles have appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, Los Angeles Review of Books, Galway Review, and many other journals. She has 3 collections of poetry, most recently, The Half-Said Things (Nixes Mate 2022). She is the current Poet Laureate of Plymouth, MA, where she writes about whatever the universe places in her thoughts. She believes justice is the right of every human being.