KITCHEN

The kitchen is a laboratory, a prison,

an anti-thesis of dream. It is colour and pain:

lime juice on wounds and hard black nouns

hiding like poisonous ants beneath every upturned cup.

The kitchen is my grandmother's crinkled skin

on my fingers and one hungry voice in my ear.

Its yesterdays smell like its tomorrows and

that frightens so many women: those who are

old with the sameness of it, like the salt jar,

like the ancient frying-pan; those who are young,

like a mint leaf or a bursting tomato.

From my kitchen I can see another woman

working in hers, cocooned in the yellow light

of distance that makes her appear happy and loved.

I forget the onion's sting, water's scalding pain

on nights when it rains and I see her moving silhouette

among many reflections of steel and talking children.

The kitchen is comfort, a picture to touch,

a place of perpetual evening. It is a temple

of the naming word, the word that never

betrays, but never changes.

To stay where you are, to measure and chop,

to never harbour false hopes.

To fashion life into a thing eaten, worked,

slept away, to meet despair with to,

to be like your mother.

My kitchen will not hold me, will not

teach me the good in repitition.

I will be an awkward woman full of horrible

doubts and an unreasonable love for shining adjectives.