Close Your Eyes

It becomes easy to forget the effect that food has on the senses. From such a young age I learned of how a fresh piece of fish can teach you that it is possible to taste color.. slabs of tuna sashimi turn gives the room a ruby red glow around the edges...the flavor of fresh, raw fish seeps into the taste buds and permeates the eyes..

Someone...or something has turned up the dial of sensitivity of light, sound, color and smell to the world around me...the steam from the kitchen, the clamor of pots and pans, the sensation of sweat and smell of salt and oil oozing into the atmosphere...now when I'm laying between another body of skin and perspiration, of salt from the sweat on his clavicle...when I'm soaking up buttery rays of sunlight mid afternoon..I can taste it.

The Senses

I strain and stress my arms outward to those experiences, tendons and muscles taught, fingers reaching at the chance to brush even the crescent of a nail on those sensations only felt in dreams until, when I’m not expecting or deserving of those moments, they tiptoe up behind me and whisper into my ear. That is how they come; so unnoticeable that, sometimes I don’t recognize what has happened until I shut out the world to write. I think my life would lack vibrancy; resemble uncolored pages, if I have those moments like clockwork. That element that pents up a burning frustration, yet it gives me the cool breath of wonder that, I believe, we all need to keep us alive, sprinting in any direction like a fawn caught in the path of a passing car. Such

is

Life

Erratic

I am afraid that these nights of hot air and wafts of spice will dwindle like forgotten embers, still warm but unlit from a day old fire. I think that is what is unsettling about the passage of time, the fact that we do not notice the details of our life flickering out like birthday candles, how the details of our past fade like the smoke that rises from the hot wick. We do not notice how much we forget until we want to remember. Fragments of memory are scattered in front of me but too many are missing to piece together a past I once knew, too many already swept away by time and neglect. I can barely grasp onto something tangible. All I can do is scour under, behind and inside the maze of my memory to find what I’m looking for. But now I find I am unsure of what it is I want to find. Maybe what once was has become more a part of who I am than I ever knew. I cannot count on whole memories of myself in this town so many years ago. I’ve found I can only rely on the smells, the tastes, what I have felt against my bare skin and what my eyes have shown me about the world.

***

A scent holds certain energy; a dynamic that lets it slip into you renders time into a standstill. It holds more than what the senses ingest. A scent has the power to transport you to a time in the past. It is place, people, and sentiment because of its ability to It evokes the past from where it has been, misplaces and recalls what we have forgotten. One inhalation has the power to piece together a broken past.

And maybe this is what food has taught me…to tune into every sense, make it three dimentional…multifaceted.

*

An elbow cupped between splayed fingers, an unconscious reflex of protection, claiming possession, or “I like your elbows. They remind me of ripe tangerines.” The opal glow from the computer screen washes over the span of my forehead to the crease of my chin, an eclipse and my face is the moon when one photo fades to black then illuminates into another. I like to dissect points of contact, folding back each layer to expose a hidden affection or resentment. I like to poke around the gestures, touches, strained avoidances that go unnoticed until revisited alone in my bed. The unspoken words, the root of a swelling plume of affinity to come or detriment to ensue. But it perplexes me to notice those signals only now when the evidence was in plain view. Still frames disclose what was not meant to be seen until after the fact

*

The brevity of the moment captured holds centuries of meaning. Bite into a chocolate picked haphazardly from a box of crafted candies and discover what the coating conceals. Sometimes I spit out what my tongue rejects but when the flavor dissipates a savory richness I engulf myself in the moment. Anticipating a secret revealed in an image is rare. I don’t like to know what is inside the chocolates before I bite into them.

I close my eyes when I eat from time to time, the world dissipates

*

But I know food is good when it makes me sweat out some kind of sexuality, works like a perfume from the inside out, makes me secrete this pheromone from somewhere deep within my core and a sheen settles across the surface of my skin. So when I raise the curved surface of the spoon catches his reflection it reminds me of mist on a glass surface just as the sun peeks beyond the horizon line.

The sliver of that same ruby red tuna has that same sheen when I hold it just beyond the tip of my nose, eye level, before I place it between beckoning lips and onto the center of my palate, and the taste stings with surprising subtly. But the cool, light sweetness crescendos into a melody of brininess swirled into a tangy zing from the acidity of the ceviche, little burst of flavor, so quick and persistent I hardly have time to catch my breath.

*

And isn’t it the same when we are in the presence of pure attraction? Tasting, touching, smelling...you experience consumption the way you experience a lover.

Because when I think of the men I’ve shared myself with I think of how they wish to taste me and inhale my scent into them. When I think one of them I remember his lips on the back of my wrist, the tip of his tongue tracing the outline of the small tattoo below the line my thumb draws where it connects with my wrist. I imagine his lips in small movements and puckers, feeling and tasting their way up my arm, pausing where my elbow connects, where he will smell the scent of my perfume that catches and settles there.

*

I am most interested in taste.

How his sweat feels on the corners of my mouth.