Already I miss our mornings, his slow awakenings,
his perspiration smells and hair thick
like fistfuls of dark wire in my hands.
For breakfast he liked soggy, soggy oatmeal,
water-puffy and milk-drowned,
not at all the best-tasting & dry-sugared paste
I make for myself from the same packets,
with so little water a cactus would complain.
Even though my preferences are the eccentric ones,
I still find his favoured preparation dubious,
still frown a little to think of those bowls of pale mush.
Yet, despite this, I liked to cook it for him,
bowlfuls bowlfuls of the strange, wet stuff,
to carry it up to his yellow bedroom on tiptoes,
careful not to slosh, to prod him awake
while it steamed on the bedside table,
brown cinnamon dust spackling the topflood of white milk.
And the way he ate it: that, also, I liked.
Too hungry to be civil, more slurp than spoon,
making me feel new-Sunday-morning blessed
to have done an indisputable Good Thing
by proferring the bowl of oatmeal
whose reception would make jealous
even the Manna of the Israelites.