New Year's Resolution: Quit Smoking!

Change is always possible.

She says that to her husband one night

At dinner.

He looks up from a puddle of

thick yellow polenta on his plate.

He blinks.

Sure it is, he mumbles.

She brings her goblet of wine

to her lips

in her two hands.

Steadying her eyes on his,

She sips.

The air around them turns warmer.

Almost like the table is burning.

Almost like the sun has gotten closer.

Or more focused.

You don’t say.

She nods a little as if to make her words

Stand out.  Sharp.  Like the sauce that covers the polenta.

A red splash.  Spicy.

The sauce he doesn’t eat

because it gives him such heartburn.

He scoops the corn mush up onto his spoon,

And for a while he busies himself

bringing the spoon back and forth to his mouth.

I wonder sometimes, he says,

mashing the polenta over his tongue,

enjoying the warm comfort of it.

What does it all add up to?

He swallows.  And why we are here. 

Sometimes I just wanna know.

Why?

She shrugs.  Her lids go slightly lower.

I might wonder that too, she says in a hush.

But then I just know.

In meditation

I go

To the place I know

Matters.

She stares into

the polenta he fixed

the polenta that

sits there now

as round as yellow

as a noon day sun

a hard fact:

life isn’t easy.

It’s a study in unhappiness

where change is always possible

but as unlikely as it is

necessary.

She inhales now.  She gets up and

crosses the room

her bare feet slapping the wood floor.

She searches a kitchen drawer for her cigarettes.

She comes back to the table.

Bends one knee.  Sits on her foot.

She lights one of the cigarettes

She has promised she wasn’t

going to smoke anymore.

On her plate

sits the polenta

she hates

with that splash of sauce

he ladled out of a jar,

he thought she might enjoy.

You might try meditation

she says, the cigarette dangling

from her lip.

He looks up smiles. Shrugs.

She waits for him to say

Something he doesn’t say.

She stands and

carries her plate

to the sink where she forks

the yellow mess on the plate right into the garbage.

She runs the cold water in the sink.  A fleck of bright ash

Falls into the water, goes out.

I’ll do those up, he calls out to her.

No matter, she says. I have time. 

She reaches for the apron.

Ties it behind her waist.

And sets the cigarette in the charred seashell

she uses as an ashtray.

She sets her hands into the sink.

And he carries his plate to her.

And he burps.

And she thinks,

Change is always possible.

I think.