I am missing the spoon for the sugar bowl.
Rippled like rocks licked by the Pacific in the 60s
It is somewhere away, shining like tails of Peter Pan’s Pixies.
Looking down into the glass opening, the hole
Is now occupied by a plastic fork I kept from a bagged lunch Wednesday.

I used to scoop a mountain of crystals onto a perforated
Paper napkin, the sugar camouflaged above its blank stare.
Grandma would grace strawberry fields before my chair.
The scarlet berries plucked by her arthritic fingers, dated
And bursting with memories of great-grandpa’s farm in Cokato, Minnesota.

I will never drift away from that healing kitchen counter,
Not away from the times gingerbread dough, spread
All around it or the Neosporin smeared across the thread
Of seams of cropped shorts as I ran out to bike more, even louder.
Never could I forget Minnesota summers when she wasn’t so frail.

After all, I need a sugar spoon, so I can’t break away
So easily. I have to attach and remember popping cans of Coca-Cola
And live between those memories, not perceive them as fables and tales.