The Disappearing Room
“To kill the dining room is to design American loneliness”
– M. Nolan Gray, The Atlantic June 2024
and I think of my mother’s silver
spoons & forks tucked away
in their felt beds, the sterling
floral pattern wearing its slip of tarnish
and the way my great-grandmother
sold off the soup spoons one-by-one
to her doctor for the small pills
that cut grief from her body
and the way my husband and I
made our dining table “bar-height”
because people will want to stand,
he said, they’ll want to move
and I picture the dining room
in a museum one day, families
gawk at the plaid table runner
each golden cuff on creamy linens
and the bread plate, the chargers
the dance of left to right
while the docent says
and people would sit like this, to eat
and couples with spaghetti bowls
in bed, legs draped over each other
will watch a documentary
on Dining Pastimes of Times Past
and all our friends come to gather
at the table, leaning and talking
moving and standing
drinking wine from old jelly jars
and my mother’s silver that finds
new life in the tiny hands of my daughter
the heavy-handled knife so dull
we don’t even know which side to use
LAUREN KALSTAD is a poet, essayist, and author of the children's book, To the Stars in Bumper Cars. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Querencia Press, Thimble Literary Magazine, The Orchards Poetry Journal, and World Literature Today. Recently, she was a semifinalist for the Crab Creek Review Poetry Prize. She received her MFA from New York University and currently teaches at the University of North Texas.