Distraction by Sauces
Something about tomatoes bickering
with tuna hypnotized me. Their canned voices
shot piquant saliva whenever my hand
intervened with a wooden spoon.
I had played voyeur at a menage-a-trois
of cheeses where Gorgonzola penetrates
melting bodies with green mold
while my husband looked over my shoulder.
He accused me once of being possessed
by Genoese pesto. I bit down hard on that
to avoid the curdling steam of pumpkin
risotto from escaping my mouth.
Every drop I spilled on kitchen tiles
was a corpse, fools that leapt non-stick cliff.
I spent hours enveloping bodies
in cloth before their burial in the wash.
The night he clicked the door close,
I puzzled over how he steadied my hands,
lifted my gaze to kiss the sauce stains
on my cheeks. I told him to quit the act.
When I found the absence of his clothes
in the laundry basket next morning,
the trapped souls in my dishrag screamed
so loud that I scrubbed faster.
