(tea)

(tea)

for my mother

Yesterday, Elaine got me to thinking about tea

and how you made me go back and do it

all again if it wasn’t in perfects

shades of brown (and because sometimes the boiling

water was too fast coming or not

fast enough or it had gone mostly

dry and the tinkle of the lime

would slide into the metal netted

spout, I’d be distracted by one

or some or all of these, blowing

on my finger from the hot bubbles and drops.)

You’d taught me: two tea bags (Salada)

(and here I have to say once I started to learn

to read I thumbed the taglines

and rubbed them wet sometimes to be brave) two

sugars after it had steeped

I think maybe four or five minutes

and I’d squeezed the tea out

using the tag and the bowl of the spoon

or the rim of the mug and then dip it wet

into the sugar like you did because who

cared? you were the only one allowed

to have sugar (I lied for my sister all the time

who was hungry and someone

a neighbor maybe  had taught her to

stir a little sugar in water to fend

off the gnaw) and it didn’t matter

if the lip of the bowl was tannin

crusted and the lumps of drying

sugar from your last cup of tea were carried 

into this cup.    And then the canned

milk and this too was only for you, and

I remember this: once I tried to open it, one

hole then opposite another hole and each

was too big and it poured too fast

and spilled and we were just one day in

after buying groceries and everything

had to last another week or more for

when my father got back from working

away in the mills in Millinocket

and I thought with shock: all that milk gone…

maybe that day you were distracted

tending my three-year-old brother, he’d

gotten into something and needed

a bath and you were heating water

in the canner to pour into the tub

and I just waited for you and you weren’t

coming and so maybe I wiped it up as casual soft

as I’d seen some man touch the face

(and you’d said mmm-mmm-mmm) of

a woman who wasn’t his wife (how would I

know that unless you said) on Days of Our Lives.  Or I tried

to wipe it.  Because milk gone missing in a house

with four kids even if they weren’t allowed

(there was powdered for us, blue as the old

lady’s hair who sat in front

of us at mass, who smiled sad who took your hand

and pressed green paper into it) never went

unnoticed.  But this time

by some miracle and that distraction (my brother?)

a maybe you gave it to the stray

cat the neighbor said, the same one who

taught my sister about sweet water, the one

who that day taught me that this milk

this spilled milk and this spoiled cup of tea (she

drank it for me) just needs smaller holes

in the can see? stand on the chair so you can

reach see put the point of the knife here see

hit the handle with the palm of your hand see

and then do the same exactly opposite see

gentle don’t tip the can it needs two

holes to be able to breathe see (and she touched

my nose and each hole) now be careful, 'cause

the next time there might not be no cat

you see?  And she left and you had

your fifth cup of tea and used the bags

only once.  And the day sat, wet pillows

in the trash, and an empty can of evaporated milk

beside it all for company.