Mother, father, and daughter use chopsticks
to put braised ribs inside their mouths, the sauce
as thick as the silence that sits on the chair where
the son should be sitting. He sits instead in his
room upstairs trying to vomit out the past few
minutes of his father shouting at him to leave
the dinner table. A plate of homework grows
cold on his desk. Endless, endless steam.
Elizabeth is a sophomore at Milton Academy in Milton, Massachusetts. She loves stories, poetry, and anime.
Elizabeth Sim’s “Eating Together” is a poignant snapshot of a family meal fractured by unspoken tension. The imagery is strikingly vivid, from the thick sauce and the empty chair to the son’s isolated struggle upstairs. You can practically feel the chill in the air. The poem’s strength lies in what’s not said, conveying a wealth of emotion in just a few lines. Excellent work.