- DS Maolalai
Marmalade
Marmalade
I wake in the morning,

stretch
and scratch my legs.
Something
is fine enough
in this—
a long rest in the morning
like wine squeezed from dying flowers,
lying under these sheets
which cover half my body, gray cotton
in moldy moonshadow,
set against the protests of sun
spread on the walls
like marmalade.
Someone is combing her hair in the mirror.
Someone is scrambling eggs,
someone
who will sit back down again,
propping her back against the wall,
to eat them.
Cars go outside
with the sound of waves on water
and the weather is at the window
scratching like a cat
to come in.
—DS Maolalai