The kitchen cupboard was my shrine.
I sat cross-legged, removing skillets.

Mama would enter the room, hand to her ear.
Something she had forgotten, the name of a town,
a friend she wanted to call.
Landscapes swirled out from her fingertips,
but this was the Midwest, hopelessly flat and dry.

In my father’s voice, a ship was pulling out from port.
Mama fed him lamb chops.
Her eyes were a package lost in the mail.

I wanted to tell them about the double boiler,
but this was before speech.
The way its sacred layers stacked together and fit,
in the cupboard in the corner,
by the mop and the broom.