A purple dinner napkin unfurls
on the little girl’s lap,
like a ship’s sail.
Forks and knives
clink, glint
silver as the silverfish
that slip along between
bathroom tiles.
The girl gets up
to pee. It’s dark
in the restaurant.
She’s afraid she won’t find
her way back.
Her parents, her brothers,
are just shadows on the wall,
plum-colored, everything
a swirl of purple, silver,
purple. Candlelight
tickles the room
until elephant figurines
and water glasses,
menus and napkin rings rise
like a giant herd,
chortling as they lumber forward.
She has the urge
to push doors open,
dash outside, gasp
cold air, hear the train
whistle by.
But shadows
surround her. Now
she has joined the herd,
now she is one of them—
sailboat, napkin,
fish.

Mary McCormack

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Mary McCormack enjoys wandering along forest paths, dreaming up stories. Her work has been published in Storm Cellar, Pegasus, The Mystic Nebula, Railonama, and the Goodreads newsletter. If you’d like to read more of her poetry, check out her book, Away From Shore.

Artwork: Lara Zankoul
Website: https://www.larazankoul.com/

31 May This entry was published on May 31, 2020 at 12:03 am and is filed under 42 (May 2020), Poetry. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.