Corelle
39
My new husband keeps buying dishes.
Two ivory plates with a wide rim,
A heavy black stoneware set.
He says he wants variety for
Plating his dishes he cooks every night.
He wonders how I survived before him.
I can assemble. I can prepare,
Toast, boil.
I put away the dishes,
Corelle on top, light and delicate.
We have perfectly good plates right here, I tell him.
He likes that he married a strong, independent woman, he says,
But he pays most of the mortgage.
30
In every thrift store
I paw through the housewares aisle,
Looking for comfort
In a China pattern.
I end up with three bowls
And fourteen dinner plates
Too wide for the cabinets.
These are the replacements for
The replacements,
The mismatched Goodwill set
I left behind
When he told me to leave,
Told me we weren’t getting married,
When I asked him if there was someone else
And he told me no.
Four months later,
she posted a photo,
A table I knew, a plate I had owned,
A dish she had cooked.
She was sleeping in my bed but
The plate was the knife between my ribs.
21
I move back into the dorms,
Convinced this is only temporary,
That I am not winding up for a decade of
Coating the bitter pit of my stomach with cheap white wine.
Did you know that, in a pinch,
A frisbee can be used as a plate?
19
I am not a good housewife.
I burn my hand on the stove,
Shrink his tan t-shirts in the dryer,
Run the dishwasher with the wrong soap.
His friends laugh at my mistakes, that I
Just didn’t know.
The boys stay late at our house
As if they’re afraid to go back to the barracks,
To close their eyes in the dark.
I leave the kitchen for tomorrow,
Hamburger Helper remnants drying on plates and bowls
From a Walmart starter set,
Put the home shopping channel on for company,
Glue myself to the sofa
Until the nightmares fade,
Until I’m sure he’s asleep above me.
15
The plates at home were white, with
A blue floral trim around the edge.
One in my small hand felt paper-thin and fragile,
But a stack of them, thick and reliable.
I set the table every night,
For four of us, then three,
Then just my mother
and me.
Once, my sister came home for the weekend,
Tried to help make dinner.
She dropped a bowl of canned corn on the linoleum,
Too hot in her hand from the microwave.
That’s the thing about Corelle,
My mother said, sweeping kernels and shards of
Glass into the dustpan.
It doesn’t break. But when it does,
It shatters.
