The Weekend We Ate Curry

1.
I taught you to Skype, to Facetime, to Zoom, to singe
our words with technology & smudged
screens, the shape of your eyes a surprise through
the two-way mirror, I can’t smell you &
I didn’t know I needed to smell you:
old grass, mint, toad skin, poached eggs, pineapple,
midnight French toast. The ice here is sharp, gun-
metal bruised, & I was never taught the orange
spells to soften its edges, I carry pink moonstone
in my pocket, send you codes to enter
my video, I clean, I cook, I gather spices & sage
like sacrificial butterflies, unable to migrate.

2.
I bought all the limes today all the limes every lime this lime &
that lime & traveled from store to store & walked past the lemon bin
although I craved the sour sunshine & color of my mother &
the way she filled my room with yellow blooms & I gathered
every lime in this muddy city & filled my purple arms &
repurposed bags & drove past the Mississippi & ancient
burial mounds & cornfields & sunflower farms & vegetable
stands & railroad tracks & railroad bars & my heart was filled
with green & green & green again & hear this song & I will keep limes
in my mountain home & you will follow the green hum to my front door.

3.
I was up before the dogs, before my tongue begged for coffee, the streetlights still scattering
white drops across wet leaves & fireflies & frogs, cutting chicken thighs & apples &
onions & the cleanest new potatoes, weeping as I scraped their stubborn skin, before the 3rd
shift returned home, before their headlamps rounded the corner, a parade of steal-drunk workers,
before you abandoned your rented bed in Tennessee I was up, I was stirring & stewing & preparing
to drown & the curry powder was yellow & sticky like dandelion death, like tears of winter wheat,
like the postcard that arrived a year too late with my name, only my name, & no return address.

Header photograph © Liz Baronofsky.