Kwame Dawes
THE EGG AND THE TEACUP
THE EGG AND THE TEACUP
For Lorna
i
Perhaps I should have asked
your father for your hand,
and, perhaps, he should have said
no, just to show us he could;
then we would not wonder
if it mattered at all to him.
We might not have felt so on our own.
ii
They never made your wedding—
a cousin had one, too, and they had
to go, they said, and did.
And you, they thought, could take it,
And we, they thought,
could handle it—so we did.
He may not have meant to,
but he taught me not to fear
your body broken easily—
but you were strong, weren’t you?
It takes years, years to learn
how much you’ve longed to be
the fragile one, the delicate vessel.
iii
This was my betrayal,
to think you could take it,
while I cupped the fragile
catastrophes of others—
for my vanity and the lie of misplaced
care—forgive me, forgive me.
I am learning the language
of husbandry, how to tend
beauty, to listen to the power
of a broken thing, a cup, some china
almost transparent, two broken pieces
in a bed of soil, gleaming.
iv
Not that you never tried before—
I simply chose to read it
as your stoic way;
you binging on a box of jelly-
filled donuts; devoured
in front of me, and always
followed by the coolness
of insouciant accusation,
and firm push back: “Alone!”
you would command, and I fled.
You tested me so often
and I failed you.
Still you gave me
an open door as if
you thought your tests
too hard, too advanced
for me. How we compromise
for love, how we survive!
I am grateful for those vivas,
re-testing inside our hothouse,
my hands learning to caress.
v
You did not hesitate,
I know, to face
the violence of cancer:
it looked as if the body
could at last
show me your wounded
self, and I would
see how tenderly
you wanted me to touch
you—inside, far
inside. So it was
not the fear of death,
nothing like that;
just the knowledge
of how it is written
that these things
hidden in the dark
will be revealed.
I see you now,
I hold you gingerly,
I will learn you, I will.
vi
Harder than a stone but more
fragile than an egg—as if in the dark
of youth one can tell them apart:
the egg from the thunder egg.