Oatmeal.

My eyes are quiet lockets in the morning– still dangling around my neck. I blink like the hesitant clapping of hands after a song is ended. Each morning I pour the oats into the bowl and think about how they look like golf-fish scales or shaved edges of dead Christmas trees. Each morning I pour the hot water from the puckered mouth of the tea kettle who whistles a tune that sounds like whatever nursery rhyme I had dreamed about. I sing along and let the pot murmur to itself off the heat. Each morning I pour cinnamon on the surface of the hot water– to disperse like the ashes of a thousands ships who tried to sail through a sea as thick as soil. And each morning I wait until the water in taken in by each grain of oat until the bowl is mushy-thick.

Slowly,

I enter with my spoon.

Each morning I make memories of grains and sing nursery songs about fish-scales.

Each morning I pour myself a bowl of oatmeal.