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.