The Beat-Up Yellow Colander | Megi Mecolli

The Beat-Up Yellow Colander

MEGI MECOLLI

My story is told in a beat-up yellow colander Nestled in the cupboard by the stove And it reads like the notes on my Sister’s favorite bottle of wine:

Long aged, begun before I was born, Strengthened by the herbal scents From foreign lands whose breezes Once graced her olive skin.

A beat-up yellow colander is not The only key to my favorite foods, To the dreams I ate up with rancor Each day growing up,

But to an apartment by the train tracks Half obscured by mighty oaks Made up of two bedrooms, a bath, And me.

My mother tells my story, Weaving the tale and threading it together, A warm knitted sweater to wear On my first day of school.

And like an epic of old, Alexander on the march, A family of three crossed a familiar sea To stand in a foreign threshold

One bag between them, But they would not balk from the duty before them,

The beat-up yellow colander, A gift from a kind heart To a new family struck with need, Has its uses:

It is pen and sword It is tool and treasure It is the first stepping stone On the road I call life.

The beat-up yellow colander, Like my mother’s faded photographs, And my grandfather’s late laugh Are reminders of days that may be behind us, True, but are never really gone. Like the all-seeing-eye pendant I have worn since middle school, After losing it in the locker room in gym class, It is something I bring with me, And wear proudly.