Constance Hansen

Afternoon

Tea and satisfaction
in the symmetry

of well-plated snacks.
A pair of egg-shaped

dishes smile pear slices
below string cheese noses,

raisin eyes & apple-cheeked
banana muffins, dusted

with cinnamon. Food is love 
when I offer it—just sharing 

from the bundle my mother
handed me absentmindedly

as she wandered into the marshes 
after a heron, that long-legged

covenant riding the wind
mid-lake: a promise 

of restoration, every hair 
upon her head regrown,

even over the keloid
scythe where they

would have taken
what was killing her,

if it were something
that could be given.

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Constance Hansen is Managing Editor of Poetry Northwest. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in: RHINO, Harvard Review Online, Southern Humanities Review, Four Way Review, The Cortland Review, Cimarron Review, Northwest Review, Vallum, On the Seawall and elsewhere. Originally from Seattle, she lives in Paris. You may learn more at www.constancehansen.com.