Passenger
Lip to cup
tilt
swallow
cup to saucer.
This porcelain cup proves my existence.
It’s a lineage, so to speak.
Handed down to me from my mother
and her mother.
I use it to feel connected to the past,
to a feeling from my past
a memory of those moments.
Sunday dinners
a table with family
a small family that felt no burden
grandfather, grandmother, mother, brother, sister.
Now, we are all somewhere else in time.
Separate, each held captive by a whisper
of what once was,
remembering those who have left us
but forgetting who still stands.
A memory now faded,
edited to remember the moments
that wrap their invisible arms
around me
and comfort me.
Lip to cup
tilt
swallow
cup to saucer.
This porcelain cup doesn’t remember the other moments
my brain has carefully curated
without my knowledge.
This cup and saucer are soft in my hands
it clinks on the saucer when I put it down
in the way porcelain always does.
delicate and pronounced simultaneously,
that’s power.
Lip to cup
tilt
swallow
cup to saucer.
The ridge of cold inlay around its delicate lip
is a lozenge that soothes my mind
a magic carpet ride to another
memory
in
time.
In memory of the beautiful, majestic soul of my grandfather, Edward Kendrick Pounds, on his birthday today, Feb. 17, 1915. He is forever in my heart.