<B>"Eating Olives in the House of Heartbroken Women"

My sister leans against the stove, nibbling
olives. Like a Rossetti painting she is pure
mischief and melancholy. She is not me,
but she is part of me. She is everything,
and nothing. She is flesh,
and fault. Part solitude, part
social like an ocean with boats
bobbing on it. Her face so sad it breaks
plates, the floor littered with pits and tears.

We eat elitses, the sweet Crete varietal;
atalanti, purple-green and plump;
spanish olives stuffed with pimentos – dragon eyes
we call them. Small orbs tasting
of oceans and distance. Picking olives
on the Turkish countryside years ago
is the closest we’ve come to religion.

My sister is backlit from the open window
unaware of her loveliness. The only
sound, the chew of fruit.
Faith is in small things, she says
passing me the jar that smells
of creosote and roses.

Outside, the sky spirals in a pink
froth. Here we are. Her face.
My face. In this kitchen the light
has a sharpness that makes our eyes ache
as we watch the cat stalk a cardinal
across the yard. We are bone,
and break. There is a country
in my stomach as the sun
honeycombs through the screen.
In the house of heartbroken women,
two girls lean into the light, spitting pits,
learning the difference between sanctuary and salvation.

Simone Muench is the associate editor for ACM (Another Chicago Magazine). Her work has appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Many Mountains Moving, Southern Poetry Review, Bloomsbury Review, Calyx, Luna, etc. She comes from Shreveport, Louisiana but received her B.A. and M.A. from the University of Colorado. Her manuscript “Love’s Apostrophes” won the 1998 Sheila-Na-Gig Chapbook Contest. She recently was selected to receive an Illinois Arts Council Award for a poem published in Fish Stories.