Still Life with Coaster

Foreground:

Coffee Table with Etched Glass Coaster.

Background:

Steeped all her life in etiquette, she insisted
that we learn this lesson early: good breeding
always meant we separate the ice-clinked drink
from table, keep heat or condensation’s rings away

from where we set some solace down. Traces on the wood
betrayed inherent laziness, a sin as mortifying as rushed
dusting; bunnies left on baseboards, mirrors streaked,
mussed hair, hand redolent of boiled shrimp shells.

We were to insulate our surfaces, arrange glass coasters carefully
as courtesy, each well-rounded, etched and rimmed in silver. Cut glass
washed and stacked, then racked upright, erect and decorous as dominoes,
as British toast. Every edge on edge. We smiled and never showed our teeth.

Her public places stayed pristine, but in the private room, lifted rugs would
show us stains, stray longing spilled into her inner sphere. In closets, schools
of silverfish slipped in and out of shoes she wore before her marriage, teaching.
Stained underarms ringed dresses far too small, their jaundiced muslin stretched,

abandoned into entropy. Late August afternoons, she’d reminisce, her swollen ankles
lifted up from edema, belly freed from girdle, damp underskin the soft of fallen petals,
everywhere her scent of Seabreeze mixed with Eucerin. There, she’d sometime let her edges
soak in shadow, allow each moist regret a watermark, such soundless rings expanding on the air.

ALISON HURWITZ

Alison Hurwitz has been featured in Rust & Moth, River Heron Review, SWWIM Every Day, The Shore, Gyroscope Review, and Thimble, among other publications. Her work is forthcoming in Carmina Magazine, The South Dakota Review, ONE ART, and Scapegoat Review. She is a 2023 Best of the Net Nominee. Visit: alisonhurwitz.com.