The mother inside my refrigerator
was a small, tight woman. Her body congealed,
and she combed her hair in short strokes.
At dinnertime, burnt meat demanded attention,
and the mother shrank smaller
until she curled behind a carrot
in the vegetable drawer. 
Dinner hummed its crackling tune, 
and the mother retreated, but I felt her
dearly. Hopes lying at the bottom of the ocean
couldn’t describe the type of anchor
this mother was. Her love wandered
and was devastating. It was a drunk
holding up newspaper stands.
There was much more to say and yet
only one thing to say ever,
and from the fridge this shy mother
hugged my finger and passed me butter
because, it’s true, I was hungry.
And was there something better than that
and more inward? And where?
Dinner was a train that dropped me off unnoticed.
Mother was a star in the sense that she was small
and emitted light and was a gravitational dock.
O how dark the fields seemed at night
when flowers closed.