It's Still Life

A son writes in his journal:

My mother has died. I’m in the elderly smallness of her house, its walls are scented with a lifetime of steaming soup, and stews, and rye bread, and I’m filling boxes with her life’s trinkets. Limoges lidded boxes, and the little brass bird shaped opium weights that are instantly warm in my hand. From Burma, she once told me. And there is dust. Dust. Her eyesight so failing that she couldn’t see her own skin on the table. Dust like down off a wing. And how many spatulas does one woman need; five it seems. One that’s slotted, and one that’s metal, and one with a melted handle, and two that are identical. The orchids died, though the cactus is still alive, but what does one do with a prickly cactus – you can’t plant it out in the garden. Yes the garden. The cosmos are still blooming. She’s gone, and yet the garden continues without her. The thistle is as high as the fence; it thrives from lack of attention. Would she be annoyed knowing that her dedication to tidiness was unnecessary – the garden lives without weeding or pruning. It lives on without her. And if thinking beyond the candles, which melted all over themselves in the summer sun, and the grandfather clock that stopped at three minutes past four, and the windowsills littered with gnats, flies and moths, and the newspaper on the kitchen table from six months ago … I can only think to say that this house smells of chicken soup.

warm in the kitchen
pots simmering metaphors
as the radio plays

for dVerse Poets, Mish leads Haibun Monday with “soup”.  ©Misky 2022 Shared with #amwriting on Twitter. Image ©Misky 2022: AI digital art.