Everything perfect

by Ronna Magy

 
I’ve been obsessed lately with teapots, the silvered kind, served by waitresses in nice restaurants, handle, lid, and a knob. You sit across from a woman, white cloth, China cups.
Talk of Your day? and the cat? Things weighed more easily before the plague and the war.
Counts of dead bodies, wearing a mask. That trip to Italy along the Amalfi Coast, aqua-marine waters lapping sides of the boat. How a friend met a woman, they’d had an affair. 
 
The white linen napkins, crystal chandeliers, purple lilacs and pink roses blend in with the tea. And the waitress comes to pour more time. 
 
And for that moment you are suspended in sundrenched space, eucalyptus leaves    fragrancing the room. No clock ticks on the brocade wall, only a mirror that scallops the Venetian canals, manicured plantings imagining circular roads. Everything ordered, nothing out of place.  
 
How everything is perfect, and then, it is not. Pandemic and war intervening to kill and maim. 
Afternoon conversation infused with tea. Time silvering moments before taking them away.


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Born in Detroit, Michigan, writer Ronna Magy calls Los Angeles home. In her poetry, Ronna combines roots in the rustbelt, and a belief in social justice. Her work has appeared in: Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Writers Resist, Artists and Climate Change, American Writers Review, Persimmon Tree, Nasty Women Poets, Sinister Wisdom, and elsewhere.