chilled muscles
cold foraging deep past
tendon and fat
clammy skin peels
under careful
positioning
until you lay your head
to rest
in the dark black hole
that still holds
the scent of charred
meat and gristle,
those potatoes you pared
delicately,
slivers like white bone,
the starch lingers on
lips and tongue,
its flour beneath
fingernails.
Did the smell remind you
of meals
children require
as they slumbered on,
tucked tightly like
rising yeast rolls
in little pans nestled
just up the stairs?
You clench tighter to
the baking rack
tilt further into the
oven.
Burrow a little deeper
into your art.
As the smell of heat
the call for a end
reminds you to plug the
holes of the kitchen doors
so that cooking covers
gas with the
tablecloth worn thin by
cutlery, spotted milk, jam stains.
Use your own apron, ink
splotched along the hem
to cinch the air tight.
Your palms linger in the
grease,
caressing,
as you push deeper into
the dying.
When the light of the
morning hits the dark stove,
and linoleum loses its
grip,
sickly sweet overpowers
garlic, salt,
the children will rise
with a taste
of severed sugars and
lies
in their mouths,
of oil, vinegar, and
yeast,
the
bread that never rose.
***
Summer Jenkins spends most of her time insanely busy, scribbling on every surface that can be found (including walls, although she will, hopefully, grow out of that soon), and making sure that her wonderful fiance and cat don’t decide to abandon her through lack of food, shelter and occasional affection. She has a Master’s of Arts in Creative Writing from Longwood University, is an Adjunct at Central Virginia Community College, donates time to her local library, and is currently working on her second Master’s. Let it be on her tombstone that she never stopped to smell the roses.
Photo credit:
https://english10stillman.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/sylvia-plath.jpg
