How to bear a sudden weight

It’s early November and the warming
dawn air carries the certainty of
change. Inside, the tap finally pours
warm ready for my post-run lemon
water.

For fear of waking anyone (and this fear
runs deep) I choose the wooden
chopping board over the formica
bench-top on which to place my glass as I
undertake the ritual of slicing
yellow flesh—

I figure wood is softer, can bear the
sudden weight of heavy jam-jar glass
with a grace that enables what
could have been a sharp knock
(surely enough to wake the children),

to instead be held in a warm dull thud,
and he
told me again last night, as this conversation
comes in cycles, although never feels
any easier, how he dreads working another
thirty years in that job and I
wasn’t the wooden chopping board.

---

Jessica Arcus writes to draw out understanding from her inner thrashings—like a visit to the psychologist but cheaper. She has been published in Landfall, Rapture: An Anthology of Performance Poetry from Aotearoa New Zealand (Auckland University Press, 2023), Mayhem, and Catalyst.