The Teapot

What went on in your big Russian head

when you set my tea kettle on the stove

and proceeded to nap, thinking

its shrill whistle would call you back

from dreams? What dreams of formulas

from your econ textbook were so

mesmerizing that all the water

boiled away, until it was simply air

rushing over a flame, and bleary-eyed

you stumbled into the kitchen to see

what you could save? At least you didn’t

set the house on fire. But you didn’t

replace my teapot, which carries a slight

deformation on its black lip, a scar

on its underside charred by your torment.

I like to think it’s a purer form of teapot:

a vessel with a spout, for boiling water.

It no longer needs to call out, if you

are attentive to the rumblings within

the metallic bulge, the stirrings that creak

like the pipes of our old apartment.

Through it I relive the unreliable past.

Listening for it I foster my attachment to

a thing liberated into the purity of ideas.

Purer, or ruined, or incomplete, no one 

understood your beet-less version of borscht.

You were tired, overwrought, impatient

with English, your wife so far away you slept

and the walls were just too thick. I guess

reality is too thick to be thought away.