P
You are quite comfortable when you are alone, letting the blissful honey of solitude trickle down your spine like a little nervous shiver. You often smile to yourself - benevolently- and also at the crowds of coupled people and incomplete family units pushing through the aisles of whole foods/nesters/urbanfare/ famous foods, laughing and cheering, crying. You came for a single litre of almond milk, and breeze past everyone. Onliest you, a wondrous phantom escaping with the time they all seem to be fighting for in your rear view mirror.
This is your city, you don't have to share these moments with anyone. As you strut, across the Cambie bridge, ( a little overburdened, yes, on days when the load is vast. But today your limbs are free in the traffic blown wind as you laugh at the sky, and the watery creek below you) you take it all in with a sorrow free breathe, your lungs nearly bursting with the air, teeming with sunshine - you aren't fighting for oxygen with anyone right now.
You are inside suddenly, rising. You make your way out of the elevator, and a warm dark gust of incense perfumed air greets you after the door has been unlocked and the beads have been parted; you enter, you are home, you are whole.
A little jazzy purr ripples through the candle smoke and kisses your ears as you prepare for the meal. Your apron is tied steady, the cutting board in position. You toyfully test the blades on your thumbs (still razors) as the sudden vastness of time and space before you unfurls itself, unencumbered by the dead weight of xxxxxxx. Or xxxx.
You pause, and consider xxx and xxxxxxxxxxxx as well. You had cooked [for] all of them, less a display of affection and more a platform for you to perform. Suddenly the White Light is bearing upon your eyes, blindingly, the curtain has rose and everything else is in shade, you tremble, as the refrigerator pours itself on you, the. Star! The only one there! The only Being worthy of its sparkling gaze. You begin to See The Meal You Have Been Created to Create, filled with gratitude you part ways from the beast, arms laden with the dismembered bulk of the meal. Every item is carefully placed. The liquids are poured now. It is all gently set by your knife. The milky din of the jazz and the candle hugs your sides as you twirl, time suspended, the breathe of a figureless audience bated. The mis en place is assembled.
Hot Pickled Onion Sandwiches
-Gingerly place paper thin slices of red onions in body temperature apple cider vinegar.
-Weep silently, leaning against the newspaper covered hallway as the red rings pale into the frothy pink of a severed artery.
