I like nothing more
than to watch her work.
Bent over a board,
lunette in hand
seesawing spring onions.
Watching the green fingers
crunch and separate
beneath the curved blade.
This particular bone broth
has been simmering for weeks
— maybe longer: if a pot is never
removed from the boil
and endlessly filled, does it ever really end?
there might be a joint or a bone in there
older than my own.
As she stirs the ladle, I listen to her whispers
spelling out his name, turning two syllables
into four, stretching him out on the rack
of her sentence, until in time, his letters
are utterly meaningless. A true alphabet soup.
If she mildly cackles over the black skillet,
that’s okay with me,
when she asks for a lock of his hair,
I’m well prepared.
We all have our little rituals,
some change more than we know.
This coming together is one of those:
her way of moving on.
