Hui Blueberry on Toasted Bagel
My father says I’m angry,
my mothers says I’m frustrated.
Me, I think I’m just moody,
it comes an goes in cycles–
28 days to be exact.
Ask me one day, I’ll
shout: The world is my oyster!
Ask me the next, I’ll
bury my head
in the sand.
But that’s just
Me Now. One day
I’ll pick you flowers and
the next I’ll pluck their
petals off (he loves me not).
1.
When the self-proclaimed physiologist,
a.k.a. my father,
sat at my tiny, blue and pink
speckled kitchen table and
provided his professional opinion
concerning the dividends on my emotional affairs,
he speculated:
You still have a lot of anger inside you,
that’s something you’ll have to work
through–
my blue eyes dilated.
He spread my cousin’s homemade jam
on his toasted bagel–never
missing a beat. He raised
his eyebrows and theorized:
You let stranger’s actions upset you
too much / Don’t sweat the small stuff–you’ll
never see them again / Why let it bother you /
maybe they’re ignorant, but again maybe
they’re just having a bad day.
I swallowed
my spit–saliva slid down my esophagus
and combined with the black coffee still
lingering in my stomach. He took
a sip from his coffee cup:
My
flushed face thought–Will there be a finder’s fee
for that psychological profile?
I sat silent
at that tiny blue and pink speckled kitchen table,
stared into his hazel eyes (my knees p o u n d e d
the table’s underside)–
still afraid my warm tears
would start streaming (I thought I had
gotten passed this?)
His lecture meticulously continued
And I listened cautiously:
Who cares…/like that man yesterday (I knew
what he was talking about).
He sighed, took another bite of his bagel,
smiled with glassy, attentive eyes
The morning light illuminated
his balding runway formation hairline.
His well-defined forehead creased and
accentuated his destination.
He was quiet.
The subject was dropped for the remainder of his visit
though the thought still pulsated in my brain like
drinking too much coffee on an empty
stomach.