Spoons

Maybe it's the glimmering, the doppelganger that hangs in the oval, the concavity.

The way you can't help but smile with a spoon in your mouth
or the way they make a fairy ring on a round table, like toadstools following a rainstorm.

Maybe it's the precision of the handle, suggesting a bowl of soup is as delicate as surgery.

It brings to mind our fascination with appearances, the perceived obscenity of a woman's belly, burgeoning & convex, outhrust & shining, a gravid uterus.

If you balance a spoon on its edge, it appears to ask a question.

Have you had your fill today? Will you consume the pulp of a lemon, a bowl of rice?

What quantum force tugs them from their drawer, makes them turn up tucked behind a picture frame on the mantel, or half-buried in the flowerbed? Where are they going? Why don't they stay put, each one gently curved into the next, like a polyamorous lovers?

When they return, their cheeks are cool, unfevered. Sometimes they are dirty.

They are done with me. Sometimes they don't come back.