I drown in the peace.
Smiling contently as I am immersed in the quite round the dinner table,
white napkins flapped and placed gingerly on our laps, a truce
of misaligned battles fought over misunderstood intentions
and crystalline tear-drop fears falling, scattering in all directions.

Gathered together
in camouflage Ozzie and Harriet fatigues,
willing to forget
the splintering of our images held in tack by duct tape mending,
wound tightly over the years, mummies of silent charades.

We sit upon the battleground,
mosaic shattering and meandering rivers of heartbreak,
etchings left by the shrill tones of exasperation
hitting our thin-skinned glass panes for all the world to see.
We pass the potatoes
along with the gauges and indentations of memory,
punched by regrettable words through a pin-ball domicile
ricocheting off living walls and bedroom doors. I see these handsome eyes upon me,
and all this time I’ve misled them,
never marching  in the footsteps
of General June Cleaver, swiftly dousing my halls
with apple-pie arousal in an emergency.
My apron always on backwards,
my coif unkempt and in disarray  ~ as  it was.

The saving grace in battle,
the mortar and trowel always in hand,
the pledge . . .
the love ever so unrefined.

As I smother my serving in butter,
I lather myself  in the balm of renewal
as we sit here in peace . . .
quiet,
though the walls around us are pocked,
they stand on their own
and we enjoy a meal of forgiveness and its fair desserts.

 Copyright Jeanne René Watson