Please, Disregard

Hospital Dinner Table

SLAM POETRY

Our dinner table used to be a place of warmth. It traveled with us from scrambling toddlers falling out of their chairs to moody teens pretending they had nothing to say.  Steaming food diffusing whatever tension we had, witty anecdotes about inane life making us laugh until our faces were red. Our dinner table was our sanctuary. 

That dinner table has since been through many things, but it stands as steady and paint-stained as always. My years of painting left it a mosaic of green, pink, and blue splotches. Our sunshine house it the country touched it with faded shine. 

The steady legs of our dinner table first began to feel their age when the youngest child stopped eating. Her steaming bowl sat untouched, our table burdened by the weight of disease. Discussions, hushed whispers, attempts to make her better all soaked into the oak top, wearing down at it's sunshine facade. 

The girl got better, slowly and all of her own. The table relaxed again into it's routine of bearing the family's meals, soaking up the happy like water in a desert. 

But once again, acid leaked in the cracks. subtle comments and withering glares. A boy and his father, the classic story of the underdog standing up to the monster. The monster won. The cold father slammed his fist down on the boy and his courage, silencing him with unspoken threats and shoving the little girl out of her chair when she tried to help, bones still weak from he own struggle.

The table began to sag. No end in sight to the turmoil, no return to the simple life the table missed so much. 

And then a new member joined their band of five. She was honey and yellow-gold skin, eyes slanted into a permanent laugh. She made them laugh with her stilted English and lilting accent, their mouths shaping a language that wasn't theirs. Slowly, the ice melted and everything seemed to be alright.

But like everything good at that dinner table, it had to end. She was admitted to the hospital, a fever of 104. Worried glances and  sad shakes of the head, we knew something was wrong.  Our dinner table left for dead when all our meals were taken in
the hospital, needless to say, the food was never as good. 

Our sister from across the sea never got better,  and we never ate at that table again.  It lies  untouched in a house we left behind.

Months go by. 

Years

Eventually a light fell upon the storage unit the table had been shoved into,  the youngest daughter back for a mountain of memories and an attempt to cope. She drags the table out and takes it home to her own family, proof that anyone can heal.

Anyone