Porcelain Leaves, The Cream And The Green

I admit it,
I don’t even like them
just bought them on a whim
but as my hand closes around
each creamy sliced-off stalk end
with its cool clasp of overlapping leaves
the same pallid green as the porcelain dress of
the tight-waisted, white-bodiced, bouquet-clasping
porcelain lady pirouetting on my mother’s mahogany
dresser and which we had to keep there, year after year,
because of course ‘she was a gift, and just imagine if …!’
but these leaves are more damp tissues than porcelain,
pressed in one over another, and I rinse them slowly,
almost tenderly, leaning over the kitchen sink as the
steam begins to rise, feeling a spray of ridges as
delicate as the veins in the underside of my wrist
as, caught up in yet another school lunch,
I turn my hand and, with a furtive flick
into a serviette, fold them out of sight
– so what am I doing
now, serving up
Brussel sprouts
to my family?