Silence, I Discover, is Something You Can Actually Hear
—Haruki Murakami
Sleepy bodies amble out of seashells—hands light-switch: blue night
laps against windowpanes. Night-breath mingles in the bathroom as we scrub
teeth, white foam coalesces under the bulb, stretching cat peruses our ankles—waits
for breakfast. You tuck Murakami inside a blue & gold matryoshka: scintilla for rising
at dawn. Paws glint down the hand-scraped hardwood of your parents house,
follow us into the marble-kitchen, bare feet waltzing the way my parents do
while the kids are still asleep. We spend half an hour assembling & wrapping in silver
—the palinoia of tomato basil sandwiches. Boiling kettle-water steams down
inside a thermos of black tea, stir in raw honey & whole-lemon slices with silver
spoons—the heat travels up & through my hands. I watch bits of honeycomb & pollen
settle at the bottom, decide I want to be a bee-farmer like my uncle.
You laugh & tell me I’ve run from every bee I’ve met.
We trickle down each stone stair to the birch trees—you thumb through logic puzzles
& tuft up grass strands into neat combs. The sky is used bath-water. An egg-yolk sun wavers
above a hill. Rose-breasted Grosbeaks & Savannah Sparrows
come home for October. We open like nesting dolls—shedding
cable-knit layers. I wear a sarafan. Birdcalls warble un-mowed grass,
aster & goldenrod usher sunbeams to join our gökotta.
Anna Kushnir is a junior at SUNY Geneseo studying English and Adolescent Education. She hails from Croton-on-Hudson, New York and enjoys cooking, painting, and watching Miyazaki films in her spare time. She would love to have tea with Sylvia
Plath.
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