<%@ Language=VBScript %> Soup and Lasagne - Mused - the BellaOnline Literary Review Magazine
MUSED
BellaOnline Literary Review
 by

Table of Contents

Poetry


Soup and Lasagne

Lisa Reily

Silver shelves rusted to the ceiling,
boxes stacked with games we once played:
Kerplunk, Monopoly and Sugar Land;
my brother’s red skateboard hangs from a coat hook,
his bike thick with mud on the concrete wall.

Our plastic Christmas tree, its branches bound,
the smell of dust on its artificial leaves;
Mum’s old blue suitcase full of decorations,
the small glass birds with feathered tails
brought from Poland more than forty years ago.

I walk the stairs of her home in the dark,
go to the kitchen window and look out to her garden;
the quiet trees know me, but their leaves are still.
They watch me through the glass; a tortoise
in an aquarium, mouthing words, unable to speak.

Feathered scrapbooks of birthday cards, their pages
like the happy cups of tea spilt on her cream tablecloth;
the small, incompetent bar fridge still packed with lemonade,
but only for special occasions; the freezer full of soup,
her lasagne and chicken curry, two years after she’s gone.

I open her sewing box full of old buttons—kept just in case—
that once held her favorite porcelain mug and saucer.
On the wall, a bright red dog’s leash waits for her
and the cheery little dog that is long gone;
I make a cup of tea and wait, but she is not coming.