by Bryana Joy

If you could go back, you would write
an ode to everything.

An ode to the dishwasher with the prongs
snapping off, dying of a rust disease.

[it is like every other dishwasher: it is a
white cube in the kitchen]

An ode to the kitchen, pink and tiled and
smelling like hot vinegar, like cinnamon,

like mint, like unwashed vegetables with
earth clinging to them, like the black earth.

An ode to the black earth, to the purple thyme,
to the time that came to visit us and left

while we were not looking. An ode to the
children that were everywhere, although

the significance was sometimes lost on you.
An ode to the children that have been lost.

An ode to scaling wooded heights in our sweat.
An ode to sweat. An ode to soap. An ode to love.

No matter that no one will listen,
that everyone will listen, no matter

that they will stare, they who have never
been long enough away to grow new eyes.

You would stand up on the frail, sticky table
and feel an ode coming on, Ode to a Table.

But it is not a table. It is the table, scarred
by acrylic paints, watered orchids, drops

of candlelight. An ode to the table steeped in
white cakes, in sunny guitar.

You say, God, we were so happy.
God, you say, because everything else is changed.

Image by Hans Braxmeier from Pixabay