Just go to the gym.
On your way home, buy
coriander and cumin, a bag
of spices that begin with C.
Consider a curried stew,
your mother’s recipe, bits
of cilantro dropped on top;
a polenta cake with cardamon.
Call your mother, dead these years.
Into the silence enumerate her failings.
Wait for her to explain.
Wait. Wait forever.
Susan Levi Wallach has been published in such journals as Solstice, Rivanna Review, The Moth, Southern California Review, and The Thomas Wolfe Review (as a winner of the Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize). Her opera, Elijah’s Violin, was performed in San Francisco in 2018. She has an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Website: https://lingolit.wordpress.com