Vessels

Vessels

The pots remembered emptiness,
remembered the ache of hunger,
how they were born to forestall famine,
to be filled and filled again,
to feed mother, father, the children.
not this silent, stew-less simmer.

When the kitchen faucet dripped out of rhythm,
the backsplash tile sprinkled dust
onto the dirty water,
onto the tarnished core
of the lonely pans sitting stagnant in the sink,
they almost felt the absence of fullness stopping halfway,
the grief of abandonment,
of never being used,
of never being needed again—
no steam, no dinner calls shouted loud.

They knew of shelves but not drafts,
the heat but not the light,
knew what happens if left too close to the edge,
the shift, when everything falls,
and now, how no one grieves what has turned to rust,
how time softens need,
memory forgets to mourn,
how even rust yearns for the touch of heat.

These vessels, rough in the firing,
made by a metal stamp that
perhaps moved too fast,
loved by a cook who liked
how they kept their heat,
how their glaze had taken her heart,
now sit abandoned in this empty, rotting vestibule,
the cupboards grown hollow for a hand’s caress.

They functioned in the ritual of fulfillment,
scentless in the quiet hum of the stove,
ignored but essential in the act of nourishment,
waiting the call to gather around the table again,
that now, will never come,
remembering, but not weeping,
when all that was asked of them
was that they worked
and they warmed.