LEFT (it’s) OVER (s)

The tea kettle whistles. The water is ready, for coffee. My sister in law has already measured the instant crystals and sugar. The water steams into the mugs and then so does a swirl of milk. I open my eyes to the darkness beyond the screen. Tonight, I didn’t have my dessert coffee. Tonight, they’re gone.

I tuck myself into the softest bed made out of memory foam. It’s those impressions in the wrinkles of my brain, not mattresses and sheets, that don’t go away.

In the morning, my foot catches on the wrapper torn from his water bottle caught in the wet grass. I leave it on the ground so I can see it when I return in the afternoon.

The too straight car seat stares at me when I slam car doors, but I won’t see her strapped there asleep behind deceptively short and silent curls.

At supper, my teeth and tongue nip at lentils and kale from garden I swept into their leftover rice. Before I know it my spoon scrapes an empty plate.

I close my eyes so that the tea kettle, and not the vacuum pulling across the floor, whistles again.