Your Kitchen

I like opening the peach with my thumbs,

the seam loosening until the fruit parts in my hands,

oozing with an orange river that floods the blue roads of my wrist.

Give me pears dense with rain,

pomegranates split with their red constellations,

and cherries so ripe they bruise when I breathe on them.

Tell me what to do

for I’m tired of arranging the world myself.

Yes, hand me the bowl and watch

as the fruit gathers here on the marble,

each piece opened, each stone lifted out and set aside.

I don’t mind this slow work when its for you.

Let me tear the basil, leaf from stem,

so the scent leaps up, green and reckless,

clinging to the pads of my fingers.

Stand close while I do it.

Then pass me the honey.

I’ll let it fall from the spoon like a strand of your hair

when it slips loose in the sunlight.

Do not mistake my obedience for weakness,

for I still have my strength but it softens to a steam

in the heat of your kitchen, and I find myself

enjoying the gravity of your voice telling me:

more salt, leave that whole,

taste it again.

And look - how the ever-imploding world still yields this;

a fig collapsing under my gentle pressure,

a peach surrendering its weight, my hands shining with sugar

and you standing close enough

that I forget what I thought I knew about hunger.