My Heart is in the Kitchen

My heart is in the kitchen, stirring oatmeal, scrambling an egg, cutting up his avocado. It's in there with the scratched linoleum begging to be swept, by the recipe box I inherited from my grandmother. It's in and around the jars of fermented salsa, the bone broths that make my house smell of an old world.

My heart chops up garlic and it scrubs out pots. It pulls out knifes that are never sharp enough to prepare meals that are always simpler than the recipes, ingredients forgotten at the store or in the cabinets.

My heart unloads the dishwasher when it can't find a child to do the deed. It wishes that the stove was gas and that vinegar and baking soda didn't require quite so much elbow grease. It wakes up in the morning to brew Maxwell House and in the evening it's there to plunk ice cubes into a glass for a tall, weak gin and tonic.

It makes it's way into the bellies of the people I love through roasted chickens and buttery mounds of sweet potatoes.

My heart waits there among the amused cast iron and the oft- misplaced measuring spoons. Beating and waiting.

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