culinary

fast-forward + touch-starved: an elegy

we start in media res:
it is the end of an age, the light at the end of the tunnel-
except the train's gone and derailed (itself)
and here we are.

this time, we have cocoons of blue-bright to keep us occupied
to console us when our loves cannot
we dream of feasts:
touch-laden and murmur-swept
but wake to the echoes of cold.

young love (in two stanzas)

cut your salt with sugar
and your sadness with sweet
little bites of
hot and cold (cheese and cheese-cake)
clasped hand to hand
or cheek to cheek

trade that serenade of swallowed laughter
for that next-to-last flash-fried sliver
a flutter of heartbeats well out the door—
and a musing from me (no troubadour)

drip drip goes the ink

i show my love
by editing papers
until they run re a d
(to the sound of their authors' voice)
sometimes,
 the authors sigh,
and the papers sigh too
caught up in endless frustration
.
sometimes, the papers thank me,
in a way that their authors don't
and when my eyes ache
 and my fingers bleed red—
sometimes,
 i'll thank them too.

paper shredder goes brrrr

i offer my skills
 for free⁠—
"paper shredding here"
(but only to those who ask)
i slice my way through
 clause by clause,
 sentence by sentence,
pruning back overgrown, errant words, to
 march in time to their
 owners' voices
 (always theirs, and never mine)
 set to a beat i cannot hear
in a way that their authors don't
and send them on their way.