An alluring smell wafts from the hallway:
rice pudding in the oven.
My mother's voice invites me to the kitchen.
Not long after I lift my cup,
my eyes catch the hazelnuts slowly going brown.
I sprinkle a few on the pudding's burnt surface.
I grab a spoon.
I start devouring.
My mother then leaves for a shower,
with floury hands and oily hair.
She scrubs hard on her scalp.
She scrunches her body.
She hangs her pink loofah halfway between my white one and my father's blue.
One of them falls out every time–
our shower is meager.
I am eating rice pudding again today,
it is not half as good as my mother’s.
To start with, there are no hazelnuts on top.
The orange sky is losing to the dark blue,
and the birds are out of lullabies.
I get in the shower to wash off the weight.
I reach for my loofah, but it no longer falls out.
There are only two:
one white and one blue.