Most Trusted Remedy
in
the numb, yellow plummet of September, I would settle you
under
the Mexican blankets on my couch. a sweating Margarita on the coffee table.
a
green cloth napkin. custard-filled croissant from an elusive cafĂ© we don’t yet
have
up
here. powdered sugar and roasted almonds flaking your fingers.
you
would surely ask me, but I wouldn’t tell you how I acquired such a foreign
treat
in
this baked goods wasteland of Tims and nothing else. (we women must have
some
secrets left to us.)
if
you weren’t so goddamn far from me now, I know just how I’d soothe you.
the
crunching ache. twitching cartilage and veins. I know just what I’d say: I
need to
get
the laundry. into your left hand, I’d
place
I
don’t know what book. the libretto of our favourite musical? it wouldn’t
matter.
you
know it by heart.
in
the leftover, dirty-windowed sun, I’d pull hot towels and sheets from the
dryer. spill them into the basket, a tangle of eggshell and cream. I’d carry it
- balanced on one hip -
to
where you’re curled up. dump it unceremoniously over your exhausted body.
my
mother’s most trusted remedy for all ills: moved-away friends, the sniffles,
shattered
families. rattle and swirl of drying towels a promise of hot, powder-scented
burial. on the saddest of days, she’d pull all the tea towels,
old
rags out of the cupboards. throw everything clean in there: a falling mountain
of
warm cotton big enough for three. wiping our hidden eyes
on
purple pillow slips and Bugs Bunny beach towels.
your
pills would fail you after a while. an hours-long rattle ahead of you now. your
hands moving without your agency. fingers under shuddering kitchen towels stained
moussaka eggplant and
Marks&Spencer-tea brown.
I’d
wait for it to ooze its vanilla warmth into you, then lift the worn linen
from
your shoulder. your quivering wrist. reveal you, calmer
under
blankets and - hopefully
-
sleeping. dream of stillness. everything back in the dryer, just in case.
Kimmy Beach's fifth collection of poetry, The Last Temptation of Bond, is forthcoming from The University of Alberta Press in 2013. Kimmy was co-facilitator (along with John Gould) at Sage Hill Writing Experience in the summer of 2012. She has read across the country and in Liverpool, UK. She writes from Red Deer, Alberta, where she lives with her husband, Stu.
Lovely, delicious, in fact, poem, Kimmy! Thanks for posting, Doug!
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