photo by Adrien Wodey (unsplash)

facing away

Opening the kitchen, grill at my back, spiders lit up, blue all around, onions sweating, the line cook and dishwasher singing along with corridos on the radio voices straining at everything the song contains, even I, cold ass bitch of the line, felt something soaring before getting back to blade, transforming flesh into sustenance, as if all our comforts weren't stuffed with blood and bone, songs of love and the unbroken, we gather words from the waters, it is the making that sustains, the smallest flowering passed hand to hand, plate to plate, mouth to mouth, it is how we celebrate survival, untaste the blood, scar fading into age, word lifted from water, shimmering, slurring all our prayers, hands up, day lifts flame from oak, horizon dissolving into green we wrapped in our hair, it is how we endure the living, each day…