The milk spills
and spills
and spills,
The table still set in neat little rows -
too long for the runner -
Dripping onto chairs and floor in swathes of ivory,
But the milk is always spilling in this house
Running from eyes and mouths and ears -
This is what it means to grow up,
Crying years of spilled milk
Like they'll help fill the seats with warm bodies
Or light the candles's stumpy wicks,
Where you sleep just to keep the weeping at bay,
in the hopes that somehow,
it's all just a dream,
But you wake up every morning at 7 on the dot
with milk crusted in each eye and bottles surrounding the bed,
milk teeth standing guard beneath the pillows,
Like maybe you were a mother,
once,
or a child,
Like you still are.