Breaking Bread

A book of Last Suppers

Of confessions and eloquent suggestions

Of eggs and roast chicken

Of caviar and oysters

Of salt and sweetness of fruit juices

Of wine aged years into eternity

And you never asked me

What my last meal would be

Rebirth

Ohio is flat. It is quiet in the way that quiet can be unsettling, like you wish that a car would crash outside your window just to make the atmosphere vibrate a bit. Last week you were sitting in the coffee shop you find yourself in almost religiously, as if a triple grande nonfat cappuccino is your sacrament and the foam that is left over is your prayer. But the point isn’t the cappuccino or the $3.49 you spend on it. It’s that clang of the register opening, jolting you that day that wasn’t particularly different than other day. It jolted you so much, in fact, the boy behind the counter let himself laugh a little, one short burst of air through his lips. You remember him blushing in a way that a teenager blushes from just the touch of a woman’s fingertips with the passing of change. “Awake now, huh?” his voice cracking. Should you have said no? You wonder if he smells like baking biscotti when he comes home from the job the way the ends of your hair hold the scent of grease, butter and seared fish. We hold things in scents and smells. Perhaps that is who we are, what we taste and smell of.

*

Touch feels like foreign hands acquainting themselves with my skin on my back. Intimate touch is unfamiliar, unrecognizable, and incomparable. It is in the way the heels of his hands press and kneed my flesh to penetrate muscle just below the surface the way my grandmother has kneaded her own bread from fresh rosemary rolls. And I’m a child again peering up on tiptoes watching those hands work the dough and I beg just to push the tips of my fingers into it.

*

I felt the drumbeats between my ribs before I see the boys with their hands in a whir hunched over cylinders held between their knees. The fire illuminating them and washing their faces and tops of their arms in a burnt glow like an oil painting thrown into a hearth. Colors bleed and I can’t tell the difference between the beats of their hands on stretched hide or the heat of my heart. Fire crackling against parched wood and a few of them, looking as if they grew from the earth themselves, picking vegetables from their garden outlined in fine twine so only they can pass through. I watch them penetrate the raw meat and fresh vegetables dripping with hose water with wooden skewers before feeding them to the flames, dripping with water and juice and grease.

*

This is what rebirth smells like. It smells of burning word and cardboard boxes empty of beer cans; it smells of wet grass and fresh mud from left of afternoon downpours. It smells of land that is hungry for water and warmth, waiting to become tanned and baked from and oven sun, newly thawed. It smells like perfume in my hair, infused by the smoke from burning ash from cigarettes and chopped wood. It smells of hemp and something tangy and brewing like a substance would over an open fire. He looks over the glare of his glasses at me, his hands moving the way I wish they would on my body, across my skin, over the slight waves of my muscles. I imagine him taking his patient time to trace every dip and curve.

He decided to dance instead, another smaller guy filling his space over the drum, and joins the others around the fire, stomping, clapping. He sways and the girl in from of him raises her arms above her shaved head as she circles the fire, her wrists crossed there. I can feel him pinning my arms above me, wrists crossed, his palm pressing into where they overlap. He is stronger than me, a surprising strength that reverberates in my ears and off the palms of his hands onto the stretched animal skins. And I can feel those same hands on me with callused palms and limber fingers, working my skin as his hands work the drum in from of him now, swear smearing from the heat of the fire, the heat of my flesh radiating from somewhere inside of my abdomen. I look at him and want the world to pause so I can make him look at me, just hold his gaze so it feels like raindrops on my flesh.

It’s humid and the air feels like I imagine his breath would feel on the back of my neck and behind my ears, settling in damp head, sliding down the spaces and crevices that are secrets from the light, places only his mouth would find.

Bruises...

...are the temporary ink spots of the skin. Carl Philips rushes into me when I study the haphazard, discolored shapes strewn across my body. How they resemble my tattoos, how they are the most crude sketches of my skin, inkblots.

My flesh is like a peach or some other soft fruit, maybe a banana or an apricot. “ Bruises disperse after a time. I have always admired that about the flesh.”

*

If I were I fruit I’d be a peach, or distant relative of such. Voluptuous and pregnant of juice and tang. I’d run down your lips and chin subtly, just to be close to that supple flesh.

*

Sometimes I wake up to the view of the inside of my arm, head buried in the crook of my elbow joint, and all I see is a gray-apricot blur like early morning thunderstorms over a choppy lake, where the sun tries to peek through the atmosphere. When I uncurl myself there is a fresh smudge of blue-purple skin. From what? I’ve learned to stop guessing. Unless accompanied by splotches of maroon elsewhere on my body, teeth marks and strands of faded, plush lines across my shoulder blades that puncture my taught skin.

But nothing is more beautiful than the bruise, an inside out star or planet on a sky of skin. Galaxies of forgotten moments dispersed on limbs.

For a time I thought he never bruised. That the richness of his flesh absorbed any other color. It wasn’t fair that he could leave marks on me but mine on him would disappear the instant my teeth left his shoulder, chest or neck. Humans leave their marks as animals do. Possession, claiming something as their own to share or not, or perhaps just to leave a reminder of territory previously explored. Maybe I didn’t trust that he was mine and only mine.

He thought I wanted to brand him, make him my possession, burn myself into him like hot iron on hide.

But that was his motive, not mine.

My marks were reminders for him, notes on a scroll of flesh to make sure he did not forget me. So when he emerged from the shower he would see the brief line of purple on his chest right below his collarbone, because I learned that was where his flesh was most supple. Condensation would gather there and he would be reminded of ivory teeth on olive oil skin.

Maybe, I like to think, he would run the nub of his thumb over the felt tip like line where my teeth had been.

*

And I suppose that is why fruit is the most illustrious, and virginal of the earth.

Raw

Disclaimer: After a meal of simplicity, of white rice, soy and fish at its virginal, uncooked state, my body becomes a source of my writing. As follows...

*

The air conditioning in the room is on the “fan” setting. The little orange light is lit up and a gurgle of churning air emits from the vents. It feels like someone is breathing on the back of my neck and cheek in the confined space of his room and if I close my eyes I can almost feel an invisible presence lying next to me, chin on my shoulder, whispering into my neck. The tepid breath from the mouth of the vent leaves a thin film of dampness clinging to my body.

*

I lay parallel on his sheets, slept in and soft from his body, legs crossed so my ankles touch. Condensation forms where my knee rests on top of the other. When I move positions the skin on my legs pulls away from each other like cellophane on the squares of packaged cheese you find in the grocery store.

*

When the atmosphere is swampy, my body thrives, pulses with the heat and the churning air from the fan. I like the way it feels with the lights off, as if I’m some transformed creature that only emerges at night, glowing in moon shadows and midnight blue that reflects off of my dewy flesh so I am bathed in incandescence.

*

The air clings to be here the way it does in the kitchen at work. I hate being too cold and think of the sweat that runs like raindrops down the crevice of my chest as I dart in and out of the kitchen, front to the back of the house, and when I look at him that same glow coats his face like some gemstone dust.

*

I decide, right there, bare to the world, that chilled air that dispels from the vents is flat and listless, 2-D, if air had dimensions. The stagnant, late summer aura is full, rich and buttery leaves a kind of polish on my skin, is the same air that takes my chopped, mound of hair and swirls it into haphazard waves and curls, so that the tendrils tuft out in places like baby goose down. I’m forced out of my makeup habit when the air sticks to me, my face is multifaceted and bare, so that it does not feel like it is made of clay. It’s easier to smile. He kisses me and I taste salt on his upper lip.

*

When he is on top of me, I notice how warm the room is. My fingertips on his back trail soggy lines from the droplets of sweat that have gathered in the dips and curves where he arcs. He notices that I have stopped moving my lips over his, stopped running my tongue over his teeth and ceases trying to stimulate my unresponsive mouth. I am somewhere else now, too aware of the condensation we have produced on each other’s bodies.

*

He wipes two fingers over my moist temples, then moves his bottom lip over the sweat that dots the curve where my collarbone and shoulder meet. I concentrate on the contrast between my nails and his cropped white blonde hair, now matted with perspiration. The same stark contrast as how they appear when the dig into his apple butter skin littered with freckles so light they are almost gray. I would never tell him I focus more on my hand against his skin than his lips on my neck.

“Yeah. I like to be too warm, not sweltering, you know?” I like the way his hair feels between my fingers. “There is something about that dull sheen on your skin when you start to become overheated, like that pearl essence on the inside of a shell, like an oyster or calm maybe.” He runs a large hand down the length of my arm. His fingers are thick and careful with their touch, graceful, and the way he entwines my own fingers in his takes me back to hours before when he balanced chopsticks there, methocially placing fish on my tounge I felt its in between my legs, that sensation of utter euphoric flavor.

“I like that flush you get too, that same sensation you feel when your skin is sunburned and everything that touches it is cold like ice.” I paused between words as I take his callused fingertips and purse my lips over them one by one. Miso and ginger left on the corners of my mouth.

I’m more aware of my body when I am damp and glossed. It is a second skin un-shed.

*

The nibble of his teeth on the milky insides of my thighs has stopped and he is looking up at me, his chin resting on my belly button. Does he want me to shut up? His exhales spurt little puffs of humid air on my stomach. No, he wants to say something.

*

His voice pulls me from the indigo colored meditation. Passion is somewhere between purple and red. Indigo.

*

Sinking into the overstuffed pillows from the weight of his body on top of me, all I see is a shade of blue like sea glass. Maybe aqua and marine, more teal than blue. His eyes change color when he smiles or becomes animated, like someone turned up the volume on the hue. Intense and throbbing into mine, I want to see them so closely that they fill my field of vision, nothing but the flecks of sour apple green that made them pop against his pastel skin and silver eyelashes. His eyes remind me of a cold that is so frigid it burns.

He takes my chin in the clutch of two fingers and a thumb. He doesn’t want me to look away. And I don’t want to.

“Your eyes reminded me of melting chocolate in a pot as soon as the last solid part becomes liquid. You know, when the substance is shiny and almost iridescent.” Holing up his index finger just below my lashed he tells me to blink, tells me my eyelashes are soft and fluttery and how they seem to made the almond shape of my eyes almost exotic, and how the corners seemed to flicker and glisten with moisture.

*

Skin bare to the and humid air that made me hypersensitive to my body even after he left that night, after he left his mark on my breast and scratch marks along my shoulder blades.

*

I walked in the rain that day, letting it soak me, scalp tingling from the drops of water that fell in straight lines, until my hair became matted to my temples and cheekbones. Mascara smudging the skin below my eyes, I could picture in my head how I looked to those around me, dry underneath their umbrellas. But I liked to feel the rain drum my skin like fingers on a tabletop. I liked to be cleansed by the water from the sky. I could feel the second skin from earlier with him wash away to welcome a new one.

*

The wind bangs against itself outside, angry, tossing pieces of earth and debris in the air. The garbage in the dumpster outsides is spewing trash like popping corn in a microwave and the sudden urge to feel that force against my skin overpowers me and I step out onto the fire escape that its trembling under the weather’s fury. The hair that was kept out of my eyes by bobby pins now rushes around my face and in my line of vision. The bobby pins are gone, extracted from the winds grips and launched into different directions. I should hold on to the rusted railing but don’t. I want to trust my feet and knees to keep me in my place. It is a test. My shirt becomes fluid under the pressure and ripples across my bare chest and stomach, barely secreted by the now liquid fabric. A twig or maybe small rock whips across my cheek and I feel a slight cool sting and decide to go inside.

*

The pillows feel gooey underneath my pulsing skin and my head pull of static. The violent atmosphere outside strangles elective lines between is wringing hands. The light struggles for breath but dies quickly, sharply and I am left amongst my pillows. With a sweating glass of wine and the stillness of a power outage. My body is pulsing to the cicadas that are somehow still intact in the tree outside my window. There is a quick gulp of wine left that I eye before deciding to pour it over my tongue and hold it there, imbibing the taste of stillness and honeycomb.

The outside is trying to swallow me.

Indulgence

He is smoke and wilted, drying flowers, hanging upside down from my wrists

Tastes of dark chocolate and mint..sometimes roasted peaches

Soft like cotton, fresh laundry warming in the sun

*

we feasted on each other's eyes through distant stares and conversations from blinks and lingering looks

feasted on each other mouths, rousing flavors of effervescent lust and distilled yearning

something old and comfortable but that the both of us had only long past indulged in

We reveled in each other

*

Made each other shiver like breath acrossed hot soup, steam of breath on skin and back of neck

*

Ambushed by the grace of which he made me feel, little explosions come unexpected as he passed by me in the restaurant, flipping open tab books to check tips, run bills, or the way he tore off bread with his teeth, dipped it in butter and chewed. I think he knew I like to watch his jaws, the strength of them against the soft part of the baguette, working past tough crust.

*

Drove me a bit insane, half past mad with the way he ate, and later discovered he consumed me, body, flesh, sweat, tears, the same way.

*

His mouth, lissome, folding over slices of meat or slabs of fish, his tongue tasting the air, picking up remnants of flavors you only get after you swallow. The little hints of rhubarb, chervil or spice that only the tip of the tongue can conceive of.

*

He had a way with making clouds part yesterday, a way of suckling he gray from them with his soul, his eyes, like a straw so that they glowed white-orange with the sun trying to burst through.

*

And he has the same effect on me, drew out the blue-gray gloom so that my peripheries buzzed like neon. And no one could look away.

*

But I think what steals my breath away is the way his hair feels like corn silk along my bare stomach, that I can feel and smell him in brief moments in the folds of my towel when I emerge from the shower or tucked in at night in the moments before sleep.

*

The first person who fed me from his palm and I swear flavors magnified consumed off the brevity of his fingertips.

Morning Coffee

There are two couples sitting back to back in the coffee shop that know my presence so well. I didn’t like them being there, told myself, maybe they aren’t lovers. How would you know? But I pretend that they are.

Sitting a crossed from each other tête-à-tête with their biodegradable coffee cups. The men, I think, are coffee drinkers. Just coffee. Black, perhaps, with one raw sugar. The man with a layer of deliberate scruff on his chin and cheeks would perhaps add a splash of milk. One, younger, with a full, almost chubby visage: he won’t take milk in his coffee. The Asian girl with black hair that reminds me of the way ink flows on paper, she will drink tea. Just one tea bag and a dab of honey, places her booted feet on top of his under the table. The other with glasses too large for her face and scuffed clogs will have a Chia latte without the hot water. She likes to take the lid off and consume every last drop. Maybe the way she consumes him.

But out of all places, homes, spaces in this town, both pairs end up here, one setting up Scrabble the other silently pondering their next move across the chessboard. They don’t notice me watching, taking down notes on their life. I wonder if they notice each other. I wonder of I’ll ever share with someone, watch their fingers linger over the pieces and think of those same fingertips on the corner of my mouth.

Hands

All too often do we neglect the serene beauty and complexity of our hands

I re-read the last chapter of Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential last evening after returning home from work, hands chapped from cleaning remenents of tomato and mango chutney from the inside of serving glasses, and suckling on my fingertips to

alleviate the ache from burned fingers.

Bourdain's eloquence reminiscing about all the scars on his nearly mutilated hands from decades in the kitchen reminds me of an ancient tree, reminds me that we are all of the earth and of nature, our scars and marks on perforated skin tell stories. At the zenith of his book he serves up a montage of scar stories that is nothing short of beautiful. “I take stock in my extremities, idly examining the burns, old and new, checking the condition of my calluses, noting with some unhappiness, the effects of age and hot metal” (Bourdain 296). Perhaps after all of the narrative, all of the blood, the sweat, the boiling water and flaming burners, the degrading and elation, the pleasure and pain, perhaps that’s what it comes down to, our scars. Patterns of stories molded and branded into us. A reminder of what was and what will be.

I think of my grandmothers hands, remember them this way and then look at my own, wondering how they have changed and will change over time. This is what I see.

*

It is still a mystery who I have inherited my

hands from. They do not resemble my mother’s or fathers nor their parents. But I hope they age the way my grandmother’s hands have. I spent my childhood memorizing every part of them, the surface of her palms and the lines that undulate and swerve across her joints.

Hers are muted and pearly in the light, holding tranquility in her palms. Their shape is one that time cultivates, weathered and worn.

My young hands are showing the beginnings of calluses. I have been told I can stop a stranger if my hands are at use. They can make a simple task worth watching, captivating even.

Her flesh with its balmy folds and puckers seems as if it has just been laid across her bones like paper mache.

My hands remind of blown glass, Christmas ornaments. They appear delicate and weak, but conceal resilience that has withstood oven burns, paper cuts and chapped wint

er air.

My grandmother’s palms trap scents of basil and mint from cooking supper or pulling weeds from her herb garden.

The tips of my fingers and the spaces between them absorb the scent of perfume from hurried spritzes out of the bottle and coffee when I sop up the foam from the bottom of a daily cappuccino. The dull hint of flowers and espresso beans lingers there all day. Sometimes I rest my hand across my mouth, just below my lower lip so I can inhale it.

Her knuckles are like uncultured pearls extracted from fresh oysters, silken with a dull sheen. The skin that stretches over them fades in hue when she makes a fist or curls her fingers around crochet hooks. They appear iridescent in the light.

I like how easily my knuckles crack. Using my thumb as leverage, I push each finger into my palm until the joint readjusts with a satisfying pop. This habit makes some cringe and shiver, cover their ears. My mother yells. “Your gorgeous hands are going to end up ru

ined and deformed like mine!” She shoves her hands under my nose. Her knuckles bulge from the center of her fingers that bend in odd angles. The ovals of her fingernails are misshapen and are different, uneven lengths. My mother’s hands remind me of pieces of shrapnel or knotted roots on an ancient tree. But I think they are beautiful in a way I think driftwood and beach glass is beautiful. Natural and weathered from earth. Imperfect, just like her mothers.

My grandmother’s hands have rivulets of indigo veins that I would squeeze between my small fingertips. I loved how they felt as I pressed them down, cutting off blood flow until I lifted my fingertip.

My blood vessels are only visible when I’m cold or vertical. Azure against olive flesh, thin and flowing like raindrop trails on a car window.

My grandmother would encase my hand in hers, enveloping it in a swaddle. I remember her hands always giving off an internal heat that never dulled.

My hands are made like hers, to rub and massage, kneed tense muscles on his torso, roll ovals into the fleshy part of his back with the heels of my palms, scrunch his shoulders with my fingers. I like how his muscles turn into something malleable like dough from the

warmth of my hands, like silly putty or clay, allaying under the power of my exertion.

Imperfections: I hate how they swell in the heat: how the rings that I feel naked without become just snug enough that I have to soap up my hand to slide them off. Typing, writing and cooking are a struggle when my fingers are engorged from summer humidity, refuse to bend, feel as if the skin across my knuckles will split open and ooze like blisters, become clumsy, fumble and falter even the most simple tasks like holding a pencil, brushing my teeth, painting my nails. The tool becomes entangled between the spaces on each hand, falling to the floor or counter where I pick it up only to fumble again. And if I try to make a fist, or spay my fingers across the steering wheel of my car, my flesh stretches across my bones aches more than the joints themselves, like leather or sheep’s skin desiccated on a frame. I hate the hangnails and cracked edges of cuticles that fray near the bed of my nail so that I bite or tear at them until they bleed and well up with blood, until they are sore for days after and I have to rub Vaseline to alleviate and coax them.

a smidgen

I’m thinking of gardens

Alcoves hidden in shrubs and laced with green vines

dangling ripening tomatoes upon entrance

A place where I go to be lost

Unfound

-Me

Quote of the Morn. Duex

Sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged in lightly.

-M. F. K. Fisher

Stream of Conscious

The purpose of stream of conscious is not to edit the thoughts rushing through. Thus I have written it raw and untouched.

*

Holy shit.

That is the first thing that entered my mind as soon as I draped my purse over the back of a single chair…in my new, but bare loft.

Holy shit. Where did the time go?

That is the second.

There are some things I know, as of now.

One.

I am standing in the kitchen of in a rather chic yet empty loft, which is more or less half mine. To my right is a glass of cabernet sauvignon. A rather big cab. Meaty but with a hint of gooseberry and vanilla. I could eat this wine for dinner. And if I pivot to my left, consequently, there are two open cardboard containers beckoning my fork into their cavities only to extract little baby squash shaped like miniature Chinese lanterns.

Subdued munch noises are echoing off the brick walls of my new home and I can tell you I’m not sure if I’m even hungry at this point…in fact I know I’m not…but I’m sitting here, devouring these veggies like some rabid bunny or rodent because I need to distract myself from what just occurred an hour ago.

If my father were here, presence in kitchen, he would tell me to stop eating standing up.

I am multi tasking over my baby MacBook, gnawing on roasted vegetables and typing, only to grab the class of cab after I swallow.

I think he would also ask why I am eating them cold.

Because I like them that way, dad, ok? Maybe I don’t want to eat them all mushy and re-warmed via microwave. Maybe I WANT to eat them cold.

But he’s not here

And I can do whatever I want.

Because I am alone. I am living on my own. I am “grown up.”

And what better way to drive that home than be employed.

Because what just happened an hour ago is I was hired at an award winning, nationally (and perhaps internationally) acclaimed restaurant.

And I think I’m about to regurgitate everything in my stomach.

*

Where did the time go?

Now this time last year and of 3 years or so past I would be packed and ready to go back to Denison. Leaving a few things behind I didn’t need quite yet because it was still warm out or because I knew my parents were only 2 hours away and would find any excuse to drive up and see me.

They are still two hours away

But I am not at school

I am in a new home.

*

Becca is at work and I am alone.

And I thought to myself “Wow I am SO PROUD of me! I drove here all by myself. I got a job in a virtually un-hirable city. GO ME!”

Not.

What is really running like adrenaline through my mind now is “Do I deserve this?”

“What the hell am I doing?”

And those movies and TV shows play over and over in my head with the same lines “Yeah, she/he is 22 and still living with her parents. What a loser.”

I am that loser…or was.

But why did I get this job? Because I happened to be friends with the chef? Because my family is “family” to the Michael Symon triple threat ?

Did I do this on my own?

Is this what I want?

*

My glass of wine is almost empty. Legs in rivulets down the circumference of the bowl of the glass. That is how I know it is a big one.

I’m thinking it’s a horrible idea to drink in my state of mind

Or an excellent idea

Maybe I should eat more veggies. Four yellow and 4 green left…even number…No that’s OCD I need to eat a green one for good measure…to offset the balance.

There is something comforting and creamy cold in left over’s unheated.

*

the truth is…

I

Am

Terrified

I remember the feeling I used to get before I had to go back to school. I became used to being with my family every day…I was used to them being in the palm of my hand or the brush of my fingertips…but there was that solace warm and rushing down the back of my throat that I was going to come back...that they were my home…during breaks and in the summer I would come back.

This is permanent.

*

“It really did light up the room. I looked the other way and still saw it.”

He is talking about my smile.

This is what I will miss about small town restaurants...about Zinc...I will miss him…and all of them.

“It was a smile I could feel. Those are the best. I’m enchanted.”

And I’m thinking he works harder than I do. They all do…make Zinc what it is and why I’m clinging on to it...dangling over the edge of the real world by one finger, one moment, or a thousand in one night.

*

But do I not want to leave home because it’s comfortable or because it’s where I belong?

But that is how it is…isn’t it? We cleave onto things we are used to…that we are comfortable with…cleave onto them like a raw egg on the inside of its shell, stubborn and clinging on in translucent drips against the grain of the perforated shell.

Confines of the Kitchen: For Your Taste

The homemade food, crowded, stuffy kitchens, all the women dipping under arms raised in conversation, squeezing past other bodies in an overcrowded kitchen, others venturing in and ouch with the echo of “How can I help?” The little girls gazing up at the adults, pulling on apron strings, “Can I help? Can I carry the bowl Mommy? Can I stir the pot grandma?” with hopeful eyes that they may be able to contribute in some way. The separate tables designated one for the children and the other for the adults. The aftermath of super, stained lace table clothes from knocked over wine glasses, splotched like tie-dye. Overturned dished and chairs at the children’s table from a game of mid dinner duck duck goose with the cousins. Fragments of pasta salad or smears of chocolate frosting from an aunts homemade bunt cake, piles of dishes growing in the sink and the women left to burry thei

r arms up to their elbows in soapy suds. The children nowhere to be found when it’s time to clean. The men are groggy eyed and sluggish from smorgasbord with a chorus of snoring once the sleep has conquered their eyes. I think that’s how it is.

A shared kitchen, a shared table

Shared conversation, vulnerability left on the tablecloth next to the platter of meat

Secrets divulged over homemade salad dressing, poured on to crisp leaves of romaine, spinach, arugula, an amalgamation of shades of green, of green of life and sustenance.

This is how it would be, if I had a family who roots remained intact and strong. But instead have found something just as resilient. That family comes from what you make it. Over shared dishes and laughter rising into the air from steam and wafts of sweet, honeyed salmon searing in the pan.

*

College and its plights of friendships, abandonments and loneliness left a bitter taste in my mouth for most of my time spent there. But perhaps it takes that long to find those who come to define family for you.

I found my family over the smell of roasting vegetables, glasses of wine and music like spires in the air, carried on the heat of the oven.

It’s funny..and inspiring…and intriguing how lifetimes of conversation can manifest over condiments, cutting boards and strokes of quick chopping motions.

The first smells of raw-from-the-earth foodstuffs transforming before our noses instead of our eyes and this metamorphosis of food into dinner ignites familiarity between strangers.

It gave me my family.

*