Photo by Sixteen Miles Out on Unsplash
A family is toast and tea, munching and whooping.
Crunching and chomping,
Smashing and crushing,
Perishing and vanishing,
Fading and decaying.
A family is the bed we ate in, feasting and praising.
Ending and finishing,
Concluding and dying,
Beating and chewing,
Crumbling and bruising.
Go back. Go back to eating in bed.
When family meant munching and bruising
Feasting and crushing.
When Ma’s and Pa’s slept together
as little feet patter, patter, patter.
When two houses were six
plastic plates of toast and tea.
Is it better to have seen it?
The moment the plate fell and the toast burned.
Shattered and cracked. Severed and dismembered.
Go back. Go back to eating in bed.
It is better to reject.
It is better to forget,
a family is breaking.
Francisca Liliana is a student at ASU working on her degree in English. When she isn’t starting yet another unfinished fantasy series or contributing her reviews to a blog and Instagram, she’s working on writing her own novel. Her stories and poems are featured in the Allegory Ridge Magazine and the Lux Creative Undergraduate Review Magazine. You can follow her reviews on her Twitter @witchkingreads and IG @thewitch_kingreads