1 minute read
I Watch Her Eat
Nesta Nordskov – Third Place
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She is not the apple in the tree, forbidden to me as sin is to a saint. Or a deviant I bring home on holidays to frighten my mother, scrying over turkey bones: find my daughter, bring her back to me.
My hips a harbinger of wasted potential and snide words passed over like bread and butter, they gorge themselves on judgment. Mother cease your prayers for me, I do not need saving from her.
She is the red-crested sun breaking through the windowpane, calloused fingertips trading secrets with my spine at the dinner table, a subtle luxury. A hushed murmur between sips of sour wine, she is the seamstress of their gazes embroidered to the breast of her cardigan padded with my head, resting.
She kisses my temple, and I pray. This love is not serpentine or my mother’s tear sodden gravy pooled in the mashed potatoes left behind on my plate.
Cutlery prods porcelain— an open mouth, bellyaching anticipation seizes me as I watch her eat what I cannot stomach. Each forkful of my mother’s sorrows that comes to pass her lips becomes an understanding of what I have always been.
And I am utterly consumed as a slip of gravy spills down her chin, known to her as she is known to me: wholly.
