There are mashed potatoes on the wall, in her hair
kids at the table scared she’s dying,
she’s lying on the floor by the stove and I remember
her purple shirt, its silver buttons, the slippers
she wore even fifty years later
and every once in a while, when last light
falls across the tile around dinner, it’s like
the old kitchen, old house–my father disappearing
down the hallway, my mother
picking up shards of a green bowl, broken.