Gifting My Mother Tabu Dusting Powder

By Luci Huhn

Forgive my short walk to the corner store. 
Late November, her birthday, forgive me 

the same gift each year. Top notes of orange 
and bergamot, base notes of musk and cedar—

forgive my intoxication. 
Forgive the mystery its name held to a child, 

its box round and dark as chocolate cake. 
And the talc’s feathery puff—forgive the weightless

pink. Forgive the lake and ocean floors 
where it was dug—translucent soapstone 

coupled with asbestos ore. Forgive the 
crystals, the cleavage—mica, silicate, the tiny
 
hexagons—forgive the pearly luster 
that killed the men who breathed and boxed it. 

Forgive the women who pressed their breasts 
and hips and more against it. My mother—

soaking in her evening bath—was saved, 
the whirl of children sent to town 

for hamburgers. We could sit at the drugstore
counter, order again and again if we were still

hungry. Who could predict the evening’s charge—
positive or negative? Who could know 

if the talc’s tiny atoms would stir or settle 
her mood? Forgive the sand and ore that edged 

her body every day. Forgive what washed
down the drain, silvered the street to the river, 

rushed over the dam—forgive the roar of inky 
water. Forgive what made it to the next town, 

and the next, what made it tonight, to the great 
lake where I live—white with winter’s dusting.       

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Luci Huhn is a poet writing in Southwest Michigan. Most recently her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, West Branch, Leon Literary Review, Rattle, and Persimmon Tree. She was nominated by West Branch in 2022 for a Pushcart Prize, and by Leon Literary Review in 2021 for a Best of the Net Award.

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