Poem: The table where we sit with the world!

By Arian Galdini

In my kitchen there is a wooden table,

a coffee stain beside the salt cellar,

a cracked plate holding yesterday’s voices,

a chair drawn a little away from the wall,

like a place kept for someone who is missing.

By the door a pair of old shoes waits,

their heels still carrying dried mud.

From a thin gap in the window a breath of mountain air slips in,

with the smell of wet, salty wool,

and in my veins a voiceless song wakes,

a song that keeps the word clenched behind the teeth, unspoken.

In the corner the screen lights up without being called.

Lines of news fall across the bread,

letters turn to crumbs and mix in,

the name of a child remains at the bottom of the screen.

The clock reads 19:43. Ping.

A blue light hovers over that name,

then lifts into the pot’s steam.

My hand goes to the power button

and stops in midair,

like a knife that trembles over sliced bread.

I do not press it.

I let it look at my table.

I will not let it lead.

The blue light falls across the salt cellar.

I look at the empty chair, the salt, the cracked plate,

a single crumb falls and makes its tiny sound,

like a grain of sand scratching the wood,

and keeps me awake.

Inside me the salt of this house wakes,

burns my lips when I share a mouthful

with a name the screen itself cannot carry,

a name that hangs instead above my spoon.

I go out of the house with salt on my fingers,

not with numbers on a sheet of paper,

with eyes that know that every doorstep aches

when the world knocks at it, tired, in the evening.

My table stands ready for the world.

A chair creaks softly when I pull it out,

it does not ask who will sit down.

I place the glass of water in the centre,

slice the bread thin,

leave the salt where another hand can reach it.

I set the phone at the edge, facedown,

the screen breathes under the ceiling light,

the news lies still,

like cold water resting in a glass,

even when my hand trembles.

And I remain in my chair,

like a hand lingering over the salt,

waiting for the next hand to take its share.

This is how I sit with the world at my table,

a small light resting on darkened wood,

ready to share a piece of bread with its suffering,

and to leave the darkness, outside the door, with nothing but its footsteps.

The head of the table I keep for bread and for water.

At the centre, the salt cellar waits for the next hand,

not for what arrives

nameless. Only blue light.

Arian Galdini