Making art

I struck my first note and the room’s silence swelled
from the antiseptic dispenser hazard-red on the wall
to the reception’s almost-spring bouquets – there
you were cradling your coffee cup with not a word
to each other or me and I tuned and wondered
how you knew her and if you awoke together
and for how long and who you kept vigil for
and how to spell their name and how you
spoke the name only you knew them by
and where sundays mostly found them.

During the chorus I looked up – there
you were holding your little one up high
and our eyes drew together and I sparkled
with mine and I turned the page wondering
how many nursery rhymes covered the miles
to here where he sits taller than your sighs
on your shoulders ever-enchanted by your
smiling bright and what that smile had
swallowed from words too wide
to unknowns that seemed always wider.

I reached the softest section – there
you were as the double doors gave way
to the figures who carried you into their
flashing carriage in the middle of supper
with your reading specs and today’s paper
and I let the strings ring and wondered
what the table you just set was like —
the one they wrested you from tonight
as you sat in garments you thought
only your home would keep in sight.

In a music theory class I left long ago
they called home the key you depart from
and the one landing your stories safe so
let me stop my wondering and tell this story
so this hazard-red room may feel like another
and if you listen for a second with a stranger
I may stop your unknowns from growing wider
and when I strike my last note in the final measure
to dismiss the wailing carriages that flicker – there
is the home key and we will come home together.

placed first in Kellogg College's 2023 Creative Writing Competition.

performance with musical accompaniment

this kitchen is mine tonight
so I make chicken soup

I coax two garlic cloves
from their coats
for it is spring
and sprinkle rapeseed oil
to make a coat
for my years-scratched pot

drop one clove
on the ground
(for dramatic effect)
and slice the other
as thin as I dare
then thinner

wrestle chicken legs
from the icebox shelf
then remove their skin
and thank all the world
that I will never
become a surgeon

submerge these contents
in cold tap water
then proclaim this
“soup”
and no one shall argue
but before service:

gather green beans
in a line like primary school
then trim their toenails
and wield almost-two carrots
for their waxing appointment
then slice into discs

curate four potatoes
with all manners of blemishes
then quarter and halve
for in this crowding pot
they will become whole
(also they should be rinsed forgot that part sorry)

select one small capsicum
that looks most harmless
and add its peel and flesh
and seeds and all and
soon my fingers burn
and my tongue doubly so

season with trepidation
and then with vigour
and also with salt
and then with pepper
and leave the pot
no matter the temptation

this kitchen was mine tonight
so I made chicken soup

can you believe that we walked for
one
and
a
half
miles on the highway on slippingautumnleaves and
puddles glistening with
every strobe of headlights
under the fickle painted sky
until the sun closed the door
on its way out
and
every
up
hill
step
became a race
to tube station salvation?

friendship is being drenched and nourished and blinded and saved.

He scoured the shelves
of seeded buns and loaded loaves
like an ostrich, dilly-dallying, dignified.
His lofty frame held a dress shirt
and dark bright eyes under flowing dreadlocks.
I crouched alongside him,
examining the same baked wares.
"'Scuse me", said a gruff voice
out of thin, stale, grocery-closing-time air.
"Do you know what day it is?"
"Me? Of course! It's -- "
Forgetting my pandemic rituals,
I summoned my cell's home screen,
deciphering, decrying this fatal germ invitation.
"It's the tenth!"
"See, ha. You don't know it either!",
he quipped.
We returned to the best before's and use by's.
I waited behind him in line
and we never spoke again.
I thanked the security guard
and faced bustling Chapel Market
smelling the ocean and the toasty sun,
wondering how I smiled so big
to the stranger who stripped me of the illusion
that I had myself together.