“Nature Morte d’un Petit Déjeuner, au Printemps”

[stain]
Once upon a time, never mind how long ago, I fell from the puckered lips of a coffee pot onto a patch of green fabric covering a table in the kitchen of a house somewhere in the smirking universe.
Yes, I am a stain; a beautiful stain, brown and green, speckled, shaped like a magnificent kidney.
I sit here and watch the dishes and the people and the seasons come and go, go and come; sometimes I reveal myself to important visitors, embarrassing the scruffy artist who created me; sometimes I meditate; sometimes I lurk under a napkin or soup tureen, out of mind and sight.
But always below me the tablecloth goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on into the endless night.

[teacups]
Salmon Pink Teacup bit her lip.
“Who does she think she is?” she said. “I mean, really.”
Deep Blue Teacup took Salmon’s handle in a maternal clasp, porcelain sliding over scuffed and faded clay. They leaned against each other for a moment, trembling, streaked in shadows and dust.
“I know, dear,” she said. “That vicious bitch! I heard her father was a serrated knife.”
Salmon swayed back and forth on her coaster and began to cry. Darjeeling dregs hung deep in her belly, slowly wearing away her coat of opaque, milky lacquer.
Her tears dripped slowly along the walls of her stomach, tinting the tea a pale
shade of red.
“And I still love him, I know I do,” she said between hiccupy sobs, “even after everything. He’s not right for her but he doesn’t know it; maybe he won’t, not until it’s too late!”
“Really, precious, don’t you think you’re being a little extreme?”
“No! He’s the one, I know it, there’s nobody else on the table for me. Do you remember when there were guests for breakfast, and they took out the good china, but Sunflower Yellow was chipped so they chose me instead? Do you remember that? When I lay on him for an hour, taking just the tiniest breaths when they picked me up for a sip, and all the time he was just holding me and holding me until I couldn’t tell who was who was who was...my God...I know there’s nothing out there, beyond this place, but for an hour I thought our table was enough...”
Past the table lay a swirling cloud of darkness, studded with menacing thumbnail images, pinching the teacups with fear when they allowed themselves a fleeting glimpse: the tip of a pen; a stick of spaghetti; an apple core, slightly brown on the exposed flesh.
“Just look over there,” Deep Blue said. “Look at them, so peaceful, so close to the edge!”
Across the green flat field of the tablecloth the dish and the spoon glinted in the sunlight.
[crumb]
Once a boy had a dream that he was sliding down a hill in winter. It was a snowy hill and ice covered it in a thin sheet. His sled was made of red plastic; it moved quickly, scraping on the ice.
The boy moved faster; he threw up his hands and shouted down the glassy hill. Wind stung his eyes like a swarm of tiny bees; snow frosted his nostrils shut, trapping cold air in his throat.
He laughed, thrilled by the cold.
At the bottom of the hill he dreamed he kept moving, bumping over rough ground
until he reached a long dark tunnel.
His sled slid smoothly down, down towards the warm earth.
The heat grew stronger. The boy tried to shout. He was burning. He was falling.
Suddenly he realized he was just a speck of bread floating on the surface of a coffee cup.

[flower]
Water curled around her stem; wispy and thin, her slim body cut through it like a light through fog. She lay drifting, petals kissing the rim of the glass. Sunlight found her open lips, tracing them with reflected fingertips, slowly soaking through her mouth into the long tube of her stalk.
A memory began to trickle through her, filling her body with heat until the room floated past in a slow redgold flash. Dazzled, she fell dormant into darkness. The world spun in a kaleidoscopic blackened blur as she listened to a memory crawling from the soggy depths.
She waited. She waited and was born again...
His hands, rough and hairy, cupped her face.
“Okay,” he said, “I got one.”
Around his looming figure, dark against the afternoon sky, the meadow swayed in the breeze. She hated them all: tall blades of grass, arrogantly brushing against royal oaks; butterflies treading sticky-footed over her helpless cousins; bees buzzing calmly a few inches away. She hated the bees most of all. She remembered their soft hands running over her lips, the impact of their deep and insolent thrusts within her, sucking sweetness through their dripping jaws.
The man stroked her mouth, crushing it half-closed. He leaned his scarred and stubbly face close to hers, filling his cheeks with air. When he blew, his vile breath struck her like a woodpecker hammering at her heart; she leaned back under the immense weight as a sunbeam, descending, laced her face with streams of heat.
The world faded into a spider web of light and sound; still, two images hovered in her ebbing sight: a swarm of bees, circling through hazy air; specks of pollen blown from her body into the sunlight, her sweetness, escaping in a dizzying rush...
When she awoke in the prison of the gentle glass his hands were clutching her again.
“I almost forgot,” he said. “Where did I put that knife?”
He dragged her from the water and stretched her flat on the tablecloth. A blade flashed in the sunlight; he brought it down on her body, dragging steel over the green fiber. She expected to cry out in pain, but only a slight tingling at the tips of her stalk told her that something had changed. Empty, new, a hollow bell rang clear and bright within her.
His knuckles clenched around her stem and released her in the water: his footsteps fell away beyond her reach. She rocked gently in the coldness for a moment. All was still; the room dropped dim and soundless; the curved glass around her face hummed in silent anticipation.
Flowing into the emptiness of her opened stem, the water began to ascend; her
dreams and memories trickled viscous down and out her throat; fresh liquid swirled through her, living icy blood, something just beginning to begin.

[sugar cube]
It sat in a bowl of transparent glass, painted in swirling colors. Sunlight passing through the window paused for a moment and let the happy hues play upon its surface. Bands of cinnamon danced in a circle; bright specks of sapphire sparkled at the edges. Each hole in the tiny box emerged, shot through with living worms of tinted light. It hovered on a cloud of gold, screened from the fat crumbling lumps by invisible smoke.
Footsteps fell behind me. I felt her warmth on my neck.
“Here,” she said. “Taste it. It’s good.”
I felt it between my fingers as it rose from the glass. Suddenly the colors disappeared, joining in smooth, blinding white.
I held it under my lips.
“Do you like it?” she said. “Is it good?”
Everything dissolved. Everything was sweet.