Finally cleaning the kitchen

more than a month after you’d gone

(little need for kitchens now;

you have no longer need for food and I

have grown indissoluble boulders

in my stomach)

 

more than a month since I last cooked for you

and pleaded with you to eat

(no use now for my barbecue:

you always loved to smell pork cooking though

and you had tried to eat it

insisting it was good and you

were just not hungry;

made with bottled Bull’s Eye Sauce—

the half-full jar still sitting on the counter

—explain to me how that can be;

that half a jar of barbecue sauce could outlast you

 

I found three cans of chicken noodle soup

your reliable of stanby

that i had bought for you on special—

three cans for a dollar—

 

and quite to my astonishment

felt tears of hot rage scalding me

at the thought

that you could go and leave me

with tree cans of soup

I don’t even like.

 

karenblenz