Tomato Sandwich Poem by Tara Teeling

I saw my grandmother looking
through a smoke glazed window,
quietly watching me with
closed, secret thoughts
rimpling her face.
The air in there was swirling with
a haunting gust of blue,
but she was eased by it.

I wanted her to meet the daylight,
to reacquaint herself with
the freedom of a summer morning
as it haemorrhaged with greens and yellows,
buzzing with the wakefulness of yawning fruit.

Come out, come out!
I pleaded with my heart,
but if she heard this,
she made no change.
She stayed with her window,
more attached to it than to me.

I was unloved in that one tiny moment;
blades of grass sliced through
my bare, July-stained feet and
my skin overripened under the
dazzling ream of the sun.

She did not study the grasshopper
as it bathed in the shade on a
rock quilted with lichen.

She did not fish me out when
I slipped into pea green water,
as it teemed with porridge-thick algae.

She did not see me fall from a
bike as I tried to jump, while
cutting through freckled gravel and dust clouds.

She did not share penny candy
from a brown paper bag,
dangling her legs from the wooden dock
as the lake waves brought the music of
water life against the bottom of rocking boats.

By midday,
I was hoping
for both for lunch and for
a gentle split in nature,
and for a second,
there was triumph.

She was not at her window.

I sunk into a lawn chair,
smelling of dirt and sugar,
both crusted under my nails and
smirching my skin,
while she cracked a door,
feeling for a step.

She held a plate,
ringed like Saturn,
with browns and oranges
whispering its age.
On it, was a sandwich:
toasted bread, with a flash
of fresh red, sticking a tongue
out from the middle.

I lifted the top
inspecting the sum of it,
and saw a tomato wheel,
the spokes studded with
dwarfish diamonds of iodized salt,
swept over with a ridged blanket of mayonnaise.

I looked to her with a smile,
while she wordlessly smoothed my hair.