SWWIM sustains and celebrates women poets by connecting creatives across generations and by curating a living archive of contemporary poetry, while solidifying Miami as a nexus for the literary arts.
White as the mug that holds it. A touch of milk, no honey, just its own sweetness.
I tell my husband that the woman at the shop said she doesn’t sell closed infusers because they aren’t good for the leaves.
What did she say? They could break? Bruise?
A note that causes my husband to roll his eyes and huff.
But what if everyone—all 7.6 billion on the planet loved enough what they love to overstretch its importance:
The hairdresser who peers into my scalp discussing the growth rate of healthy follicles, extolling his tirade on parabens as Satan’s operatives. Or the dentist
that would slip Grinch-like into the sleeping houses of her patients to steal away the sugared formula bottles from their babies’ cribs if she could.
Later, at the imports store, I choose an infuser I hope will please my husband but not horrify the tea woman
if she were to see it, though of course, she won’t.
At home, I place the leaves of the white coconut cream tea into the infuser with some care, with more reverence than I would have imagined possible only a short time ago.
This is all we can ask of ourselves:
to hold the world a little more gently each day than we did the day before.
Kathryn Petruccelli is a bicoastal performer and writer with an M.A. in teaching English language learners. Her work has appeared in New Ohio Review, Rattle, Literary Mama, Ruminate's blog, and elsewhere. She is a past winner of San Francisco's Litquake essay contest and her work earned honorable mention for the Joe Gouveia Outermost Poetry Contest judged by Marge Piercy. She is at work on a poetry series based on the history of the alphabet. See more at poetroar.com.
