What I'm left with
for nonna and nonno
Rare eyes: passed down
like hand-painted china, each grandchild’s
a shade of moss, olive, deep green.
Recipes for meals I couldn’t pronounce; biscotti, polenta,
plump balls of gnocci. The tradition of ten dollar allowance
and bags of loonies on birthdays, saved
from trips to the Woodwards cafeteria.
The black and white photo of their wedding day:
pale skin, lips tinged with pink someone added on
with careful hands. The front garden roses, cut
into a crystal vase, petals the colour of nonno’s wine,
the scent strong as nonna’s bath powder, the quilt on her bed
dusted with a fine sheen of white from our tiny hand prints.
The way my hands move, like nonna’s: floured, firm,
a sculptor of bread hunched in rolls under a blanket,
like her own rounded shoulders, disappearing
into the folds of her silk floral blouse.
A bowl of languages: English folded into French
with Italian endings stirred in. English learned
from Soap Operas and romance novels
traded in at the second-hand book store for more.
And stories, like a box of moth-eaten sweaters
that I will wear every so often when I am cold
and think of nonna with a baby in Africa, her first home,
or nonno, miles away at war, waist in the trenches,
or the two of them years later,
singing fait dodo while I close my eyes.
for nonna and nonno
Rare eyes: passed down
like hand-painted china, each grandchild’s
a shade of moss, olive, deep green.
Recipes for meals I couldn’t pronounce; biscotti, polenta,
plump balls of gnocci. The tradition of ten dollar allowance
and bags of loonies on birthdays, saved
from trips to the Woodwards cafeteria.
The black and white photo of their wedding day:
pale skin, lips tinged with pink someone added on
with careful hands. The front garden roses, cut
into a crystal vase, petals the colour of nonno’s wine,
the scent strong as nonna’s bath powder, the quilt on her bed
dusted with a fine sheen of white from our tiny hand prints.
The way my hands move, like nonna’s: floured, firm,
a sculptor of bread hunched in rolls under a blanket,
like her own rounded shoulders, disappearing
into the folds of her silk floral blouse.
A bowl of languages: English folded into French
with Italian endings stirred in. English learned
from Soap Operas and romance novels
traded in at the second-hand book store for more.
And stories, like a box of moth-eaten sweaters
that I will wear every so often when I am cold
and think of nonna with a baby in Africa, her first home,
or nonno, miles away at war, waist in the trenches,
or the two of them years later,
singing fait dodo while I close my eyes.