Stained by Molly Zhu

Stained
Molly Zhu

My love, you are an impressionist painter
when you eat,
and wearing white is your call to action.
Any bowl of spicy noodle soup can make my heart stop
the tendrils of flour and water like eels
in a Martian river dancing between your
chopsticks, spraying vermillion on everything
pristine. These old stains you leave
like scripture, and when we grow old one day
I will spin yarns of you and freckle each thread
with the hot sauce,
grease and marinara that coat your poor
linen shirts like a vignette on canvas. When your
own materials become too routine for your painter’s
touch I know you will use my jackets and skirts
as your blank slate, a gentle squeeze of the shoulder
leaves a gravy print and sheepish look on your face.
I’ve thrown many a tee shirt straight in the wash and
bleach is a ritual in the years that I’ve loved you.
You come from a line of spillers –
I remember the summer after your grandfather had left us
for new earth, sitting in his closet
weaving and siphoning through his old sweaters
feeling the cotton and wool
whisper the story of a man who’d been loved so deeply,
each sleeve and collar and hem bespeckled
with the ghost of a stain left as a token
of indelible tenderness.

MARGINALIA

1.
I confess I have learned to love the way you move through the world leaving traces—evidence of appetite, proof of living fully.

2.
Look at these love letters disguised as stains on cloth. Each splash of curry, each drop of wine, a small signature that says you were here, you were hungry, you were satisfied.

3.
Look how tenderness accumulates in fabric, how being cared for leaves residue that outlasts the body.

4.
I am learning to see beauty in the splatter, poetry in the spill. I understand that some messes are worth making.

5.
I confess I want it all out on display, all the evidence of a life lived without apology.