~~~°~~~

you and I met at this kitchen counter
all knives, teeth, grins and salutations.

we laid the accident so tragically
that nights were tangled with sunbeams.

I've always found cooking—therapeutic.

maybe the little act of slicing through
something; the silence, the deliberateness,
 the death even the soft calling of chaos.

Indicative of spices I exhumed in my mouth, burning the remnants of dullness as if it's meant to permeate every words we turn into flavouring instead.

you were the bright red-orange fresh turgid plump, coveting sounds of cutlery.

and I was the fleshy meat that went along the symphony of soporific urges that manage to jilt the woman she once was.

I used music as a guide on how good my food would taste after. dancing against the refrigerator light and stoves aflame, hair in a bun and your shadow as the ticking of the clock.

puffs of flour, paprika, garlic powder, coriander and every aching November lilac sky, we ended up stirring in the air and into our pot of thoughts-- commensurating in oil or unsaid metaphors.

oven heated to a degree hotter than the hundredth of a thousand Suns

and yet the muck it had birthed, an anomaly no palate could cleanse, crisped waste.

wine was taken in marginal consolations. just two strangers at either side of a burning bridge. we both laughed at the predicament, belied the aching truth. maybe we weren't meant for kitchen counters or cooking thoughts into disposable memories.

I still cook my reveries in aromatic spiced meats, only this time—

I use my knives sharply to cut the falsehood of tenderness. 

~~~°~~~