Sipping Grace

My mother sipped
steeped
tender white tea leaves
from a 24-carat gold-rimmed tea cup
that I bought on holiday.

I wanted royalty
to touch her lips,
still parched from those dusty years
she had languished in The Camp.

When the rim chipped,
she spun it slowly,
and sipped a second cup
from the other side.

*

Kelly Sargent is a HOH author and artist whose works have appeared in more than forty literary publications. She is a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee, and her newest poetry chapbook entitled Seeing Voices: Poetry in Motion is forthcoming. She wrote for a national newspaper for the Deaf, and currently serves as the creative nonfiction editor and an assistant nonfiction editor for two literary journals, as well as a reviewer for an organization dedicated to making visible the artistic expression of sexual violence survivors.