Born Melancholy and My Mother Buys Me Sea Salt

Born Melancholy

After Mary Szybist

Having been born melancholy, I love the hyacinth scent of its dusty, gold-stamped spine.

My father’s repeated stories, the Bozye Moy shaking of his head at the supper table, his bent back seen from outside the house when he sat on the couch, always waiting, or remembering, or worrying about something he’d lost.

Being born melancholy, I accepted as normal my grandmother’s self-imposed exile and martyrdom in the corner bedroom, where she stored her toaster oven, icons, and anatomy books.

The Slavic chanting in church both bored and tired, but, unlike American hymns, did not annoy me.

Early on, I gravitated to boy singers who smudged their eyes and posed on bluffs like Heathcliffs in pluming sleeves.

I like the denseness and thickness of melancholy, its mossy thickets.

When I married my husband, we joined our melancholies together, and for that reason, understand each other always.

The bow of forehead to floor, the communion wine bursting Joy’s grape against my palate— I could sleep in melancholy’s deepest blue for days.

Sometimes, melancholy and happiness twin through my body, a twining moon flower, double locket with an opal frame.

My mouth tastes of thistle and cloves, or the coffee rinds left in the bottom of a cup of Turkish coffee.

Winter evenings, I’m glad to ease my mind from the sun.

My Mother Buys Me Sea Salt

in bottles and plastic bags, crystals grey, pink, and red, in addition to the common white. I have grown doe-ish, pinch it from the jar, lick it from my fingers, sow it over everything I eat. I think of amniotic fluid in which I was immersed for nine months. I remember my grandmother throwing salt over her shoulder against the evil eye. Lot’s wife, a pillar pelted with wind until she wore down to a pitted mound. I think of ruin. I think, encrustation. The rut of tears down my cheeks. I brush my legs with salt to uncover luster. I store it in its own wooden ark. My mother’s salt savors the food I eat. It testifies to the holy of holies.

Anya Silver is a poet and teacher. She has published four books of poetry, most recently Second Bloom (Cascade 2017). She is currently a Guggenheim Fellow in Poetry (2018). She teaches at Mercer University and lives in downtown Macon with her husband and son. Instagram: @anyasilverpoet, Twitter: @anyasilverpoet

Cover photo by Jason Tuinstra on Unsplash