Читать книгу Strangers - Rob Taylor - Страница 11

Fourteen, with hollow, aching limbs

I fed my fingers past empty serving bowls

and plucked a cube of melon from my mother’s plate,

her fork cascading down to catch

my knuckle mid-retreat.

Had I been ten or twenty,

had my father been alive,

some innocence or indifference

would have gotten in the way

(civility and all its cobbled barricades).

Instead, that day, she dug down

on the clenched crown of my fist

until the tines began to puddle blood

and our brunch guests’ laughter

clotted to a glottal stop.

Our laughter lasted on—

bewildered, joyful, barely seamed

with spite—though I let go.

Eventually I must have

let the damn thing go.