Peter Balakian: My Mother’s Sink

My mother hated the sink that came with our new colonial house.
Had it ripped out. Then found in an art shop a four foot slab
of Italian marble with a bowl of bronze fish swirling the white porcelain—
handles and spout –high legs—all bronze, a bathroom sink just for the kids she said—
Washing up each day— I stared through shaving cream and spit—at the
bronze fish under toothpaste, suds, and cream —

years later—it hit me every time I returned—as I spit and shaved:
the fish of Paul Klee, Matisse, Jan Breughel, slithering tails of Tintoretto —

all seeped in me—
the way that time patinas your skin.

Even now my brain sinks into the tepid water of that basin—
the bronze fish swimming around the black hole of the drain


where my mother, too, has gone—into the grainy waves of that marble.

This poem appeared in Plume.