The Liturgist

I am her kettle. Four years she has spent
learning my moods: two clicks, and then a threat.
Today a stranger touched me, and I went
to boil. She has not forgiven that yet.

He took the only chair that doesn't sway,
and poured her tea. His cassock, priestly black,
the clay beneath his nails, his gentle way:
she should have run. She sat. Her chair rocked back.

For one whole hour he talked. I kept the heat.
He guessed her milk, her father's lemon: right
on both. She hated that. She kept her seat,
and drank, and listened in the window light.

He rose. "You're like your mother. She was brave,
braver than all of us." She hadn't told
him of her once. He smiled, as if to save
the word, twice said. I felt the whole room hold.

He left the way his kind do, through the wall,
the hem of him the last of him gone thin.
She did not scream, or run, or try to call,
but followed him, coat buttoned to the chin.

She washed both cups. His stood full, with a skin
across the tea. I cooled, and ticked, and ticked.
One touch of his, and I had given in.
Four years for her. For him I simply clicked.