I’m sipping my coffee the old-fashion way out of a cup and saucer. A duck takes flight in green to find the end of the rainbow in a crystal glass of water. You don’t have to go anywhere to find it—gold. Silk roosters and glass elephants hang from a door for new beginnings and good luck, so make a wish for greener pastures in a frame.
Old rackets on brick walls; let them hang. No more games that I don’t want to play anymore. Russian dolls stuffed in a USA boxing glove, some hurt, “so Memphis” a little flag reads, I breathe. A city I’ve never been to. Santa’s sleigh sits on a mirror inside a frame. I went down an old familiar road that I didn’t want to take, so I’ll leave it as a painting in an antique shop for its dark beauty, too. A woman wails on the stereo, the melodies we return to.
Tea cup sets on old shelves; flutes, flowers, saucers in stacks, and colonial couples about to dance next to blue and green glass, I don’t think about my mother. I thought that my story had value, but “everything is for sale,” the owner half-French says taking a seat in a chartreuse chair with wings below a portrait of an African woman. I want to leave some stories behind today to never look back. Voice sings the same words as the last—no, I don’t regret anything.
A little angel flies out of frame. There’s a light at the end of a couple of teardrops. Another woman’s jeans sparkle, “are you writing” to a chorus on the stereo; yes, this is my exercise, to sit in shops and reflect on old stuff, how I got here, works of art.
I miss a voice that I left behind long ago so thinking about leaving what I picked up along the way instead in neat stacks of porcelain delicate and strong. They didn’t feel like they were mine, anyway. Like the old rackets on the wall, it took more than one to play or just a wall, and we’ve all made false moves, but history is people doing the best they can with what they got, he said. I had to forgive my family for so much, and I found that I was unforgivable for a lot less; blame was an old familiar friend, so put the niceties away, la politesse over tea, and do one final turn over a fluttering vibrato in French in an antiques café in Turkey.
None of the chairs match the three wooden tables with silk lampshades.
She’s putting out vintage coca cola trays across the floor bright red. I could furnish a sweet little home here, but I don’t think I want to do that. In stacks, tea cups gleam pristine against stone walls with family portraits in black and white and a certificate of “bonne conduite.” Have a good ride. Baskets, an orange rotary phone, hand-painted trays, and miniature red glasses surround a wooden bar covered in glass jars, m&m dolls, fake flowers so soft, and bottles of sweet distillations of violet, jasmine, and rose. Plates and cups rise and shine. A youthful hand illustrated Paris, New York, and London behind the bar. “I didn’t want to end up here” sounds a little like someone else, which can be odd, because I picked up some things that don’t feel like mine; it feels like that sometimes.
Leaving things behind like empty saucers that others filled with their stories, too, to make room for something else. I don’t want this anymore, pinching an ear of a handle, listening to myself. The nude woman in a frame—what do you think she means? The expression on her face? So many ways to frame it, picking up old familiar shapes that I wished I had never let go—a reunion with what lost and found and lost again. A colonial couple dances in blue, light shining through the shade. Hats, hats, hats perched above a military jacket, African women walk with baskets on their heads in a line—bien venu: welcome. A gold bow around nothing but the present moment, I found a Russian doll on hand-painted Japanese trays, a painting of an African boy peeking beneath a hand towel that reads “travel often.”
Fresh green melon and pineapple on a dish, I pick up a miniature prong with a white handle. I yelled to her in the back—thank you in Turkish. She cries back as if it were a love song, too—gratitude. “I’ll think of you every step of the way,” Whitney Houston follows Piaf’s declaration that played again about starting over. Houston is leaving too; it just doesn’t work, but with love—I will always love you, waving goodbye. So many ways to say it with love, so “My Heart Will Go On” at the final corner in a blond café smaller than a closet with a cardamom coffee in china. Glass glows from thatched ceilings in sensuous shapes. Taillights break through an empty crystal glass. No harm done, in the end.
