the world has shifted on its axis and somehow i am
still here, standing. and yet.
i’ve been in the kitchen a lot lately. there is something hypnotic — cathartic, almost — about baking and cooking. the repetitive kneading of dough. the rise and fall of a knife blade weaving through carrots, kale stems, mushroom caps. the first soft hiss of oil on a hot pan.
midway through doing the dishes i have a habit of tilting my palm upward to catch the water, letting liquid sluice through my fingers, clear blades threading a slender weft of bones.
truth is, i have always kissed like a storm. bruised too easy. felt like a hurricane. i’m sorry i can’t help it. or sorry - i mean, i’m not sorry. i’m still learning not to apologize, when truth is there still aren’t enough mouths in this world for all the voices in my belly. shh, baby. swallow. at work (at home?) the other day there was a team discussion around establishing some kind of reporting cadence for an analysis i was working on and for a moment then, i thought to myself, cadence: what a lyrical word for numerical representation. i’m tired of spreadsheets. not everything needs to be a number. cadence is one two three please don’t leave. its been eight weeks since we’ve all held each other, now tell me if there’s an excel model for that.
did you know that the half-life of the coronavirus, airborne, can be up to three hours?
i didn’t.
but i think that when all of this is over it will take us more than three hours to re-learn how to hold each other, if at all. we might never greet with our hands for a long, long time. i wonder if people will go on tapas dates ever again.
what is yearning — if not the dog ear of a plane ticket winking behind a passport cover?
what is my body beyond 5’5” of skin molded into a prayer just light enough to hold the weight of living?
what is writing beyond a life in lines, sentenced?
/
this is my now:
a london spring — the careless whisper of May, just warm enough around the edges for us to shed the jackets. tuesday evening bleeding into what seems like thursday night. the days are a blur of hours set to the beat of emails, calls, presentations; the evenings stained with the first flush of wine creeping up my cheeks; our legs crossed at the ankles as we watch the last rays of sunset dissolve like pale ale in a glass. i am writing this while waiting for the blood orange olive oil loaf in the oven to rise, and i can just about smell the citrus zing making its way across the living room space.
london has been holding its breath for awhile now. some nights are moonless, still as the dark of a red wine pour looking up at you; other days the moon is a pale nick in the sky. always clear, planeless.
/
here’s a secret. some days i feel like an ellipsis. a body half-dressed in a room of people. unspun in an imperfect world.
and yet. standing. here, still.
