These are the people in my neighborhood

What a wonderful idea, looking, really looking, at the people around you. Great haiku prompt this week at http://onedeepbreath.com

Once I get started writing haiku, I just want to go on and on, trying to capture the very heart of something in those tricky syllable sentences. 5 - 7 - 5.

I remember walking through the streets of Philadelphia one hot summer night, making up calming breath haiku with a really cool dude I once knew. Calming breath, in for 5, hold for 3, out for 7, or something like that. Like the way you're supposed to breathe to reduce stress, to relax. You know, as I mentioned in an earlier set of haiku, the breathing thing I'm so bad at.

Ah, memories. Breathing and rhyming and making up words with a handsome stranger in a foreign city. Well, foreign to me, anyway. But that was ages ago, in another life. What follows are the people in my life today, at least the people I observed today. Thanks for reading!


Sad girl in drive-thru.
Black rivers of shining hair
begs compliment; smile.

Mother, baby, hip.
As attached by rain as cloth.
Sweat is loving close.

Baby in new shoes.
Brother stretches just to there,
hard sneaker goes here.

In rain we all melt;
puddles of neighbors on grass,
so good to see you!

Sad creeps into eyes,
settles in for lengthy stay.
Dig deep, tear roots, plant.

I called my lawyer.
Overheard in WalMart aisle,
shopping for despair.

Time to Keep the Cat In

This poem is in response to this week's Poetry Thursday prompt: time. It has me feeling both happy and sad. I am pleased that the muse visited me at 12:22 am recently. Pleased, actually, that she visited me at all, since I have been in a bit of a writing slump, of late. And, pleased, I should say, with myself for actually turning on the light, grabbing my journal and a pencil, and writing down what was so obviously a gift from the writing fairy.

However, I am not pleased with myself for not rushing up out of bed, flinging the door open, running around the yard, and scaring that darn cat so he would drop the mouse (which turned out to be a mole--the third in a series). If I wasn't so tired. If I wasn't in the middle of a nasty, nasty summer virus. (Who knew you could get a virus in the summer?)

I know. If I had gotten up, the cat probably would have left the mole maimed and suffering, only to return the minute I went back to bed. I know. If I had gotten up, I never would have recorded my poem. But killing for art? That is so not me.

Sometimes, I find it hard to be a cat owner. Anyway, thanks for reading!



Time of Death: 12: 24 AM

As I lay me down to sleep, I heard chirping,
a squeaking really, given the hour,
and the bedtimes of birds,
an insistent, repeating squeaking, fighting
to be heard above the cicadas constant hum,
and the slow steady breath
of my husband’s nightly tune.
The white cat had a mouse.
What at first sounded like bed springs groaning,
the four-year-old rolling over,
maybe, or lovers next door, windows open wide,
crescendoed, grew into mouse shrieking
for his life. Oh cat, your killing
is going to wake the children.

I wanted to cover my ears, slide
closer to my husband’s open mouth
drown out the cries with the warm rhythm
of sleep, but I was tired,
too tired to move,
as caught in the first stirrings of sleep
as the mouse was surely caught in the cat’s
front teeth. Poor mouse.
After which late-night feeding,
which local morning-news
random shooting, which war,
did I become a believer
in that weary, old cliché?
There was nothing you could have done.
Then, as suddenly as it began, the squeaking
quieted to a distant note,
faded into the cicadas silvery lullaby.

Tomorrow morning I will give the cat
a round of thunderous applause.
It’s what good cat owners are supposed to do.

The Music in Silence

I really like the One Deep Breath prompt this week: music. According to legend, or, at least my father's favorite story of his parenting prowess, I have been listening to music since I was born. We had a radio in every room, he proudly declares. You've been listening to music since the day we brought you home. There was even one right by your crib.

And, I have to admit, I am quite proud of this myself. Since an early age, I have been able to sing along to everything from The Irish Rovers (Cats and rats and elephants as sure as you're born, but you're never gonna see a unicorn...and ah, what is that song about the MTA? Oh he never returned, no he never returned and his fate is still unknown...), to Charlie Daniels and Waylon and Willie (Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys), and Lawrence Welk (I could even do a little polka while blowing bubbles!) I have sung in show choirs. Of course, that was mainly high school. By the time I got to college and joined a chorale, I thought I was too cool for it, never showed up, never formally withdrew from it, and got the only F I've ever had in my life!

I love to sing. I love most every kind of music, and yet, my offerings tonight for musical haiku celebrate the music in silence. This after a long summer day with the kids!

Hum of the fish tank,
song of waving goldfish fins.
The house is silent.

No Chopin or Bach,
no Baby Einstein plays now.
The children are down.

Can you hear them hum?
Old lover's voice in the trees.
Cicadas sing on.

Back porch in jammies
invisible summer choir.
Will crickets eat our ice cream?

Packing for Your New Life

Marriage is a funny thing. We just drove two rainy hours north (and, of course, two screamy return hours south) to celebrate the 45th anniversary of some family friends. Everytime we hear about someone being married for longer than, say, 10 minutes, one of us invariably says...how is that possible? And I usually think, I can't take 45 mintues more!

The funny thing is, we really went up north this weekend for our son. He is absolutely crazy for the couple's granddaughter. Just loves her. But, not in the way you may think. There is no "crush" here. He has just found someone he really, really likes. At some point every day he says, "You know who I miss Mommy? Colleen." When he was invited to this anniversary party, I had to explain how an anniversary is like a birthday, only it celebrates the day you got married. Why celebrate, he asks? Why, indeed, I wonder. To this I have no answer. We go on to discuss the geographical distance between him and his dear friend. It is approximately 1 hour, which in child time is like infinity (direct quote from my son). Then, with all the wisdom of a four-year-old (which, in truth, is often vast and profound), he says, Well, I guess when I get older and Colleen gets older, we can get married. Marriage as solution to distance problem. Of course! It makes sense.

At some later date, I will further explore this marriage phenomenom. I have always intended to write a manual for unassuming brides-to-be, complete with all the things no-one ever told me. For example, because at some point you may want to take them off and throw them, buy your engagement and wedding rings a little bit big. Things like that. Until then, here is my contribution to Poetry Thursday's "freedom of choice" prompt. This was my 2-months after the wedding impression of marriage. Thanks for reading!


Packing for Your New Life: Instructions to the Bride

Take a journal.
You will need the vast
white peace
of the blank pages.

In your trousseau be sure to pack
your oldest jeans
and a warm wool sweater,
deserted beaches by moonlight
can be chilly.

Learn to count stars,
as well as sheep and blessings.

Whether at your local library
or town hall
get directions
to the nearest well.
Keep a map with you and mark
the spot with a big red “X.”
When you find it,
remember all the really important
encounters happen at a well.

Bring a Bible
and some prayer
beads. Even if you’re not practicing,
a little faith
in things small and round,
a little faith
in words wise and leather
never hurt anyone.

Still,
despite holy
admonitions and what your Bible
might tell you, bring a rabbit’s foot.
Luck and your husband
are not idols,
and if you find a really flashy
colored fur charm,
bright purple, hot pink,
you won’t have to rely on stars alone.

Morning haiku at my house

After reading haiku on One Deep Breath and listening to Norah Jones (and yes, drinking the little margarita my husband made me), I was pretty mellow last night. I was hearkened back to the first time I took a yoga class. I was, once again, in a dimly lit room, relaxed on a soft blue mat, entranced by the instructor's soothing voice, amazed by the revelation that breath can calm you. Breath. Yes! Your very own breath can calm and center you. You need but to breathe, just be aware of your breath and breathe, deeply and evenly, not in jagged, anxious puffs whenever you remember to.

This is how I went to bed.

At 1 am I calmly rocked the baby back to sleep. I breathed with her. We were calm. We breathed. In one gentle breath I slid her into her crib and I slid back into bed. Breathing.

At 4 am I breathed through the four-year-old's elbows in my back. Breathe. Just breathe. I breathed through knees and elbows and one knobby little noggin massaging the spaces between my backbones, poking the small of my back where I carry my worries. I breathed pointy big toes out of my ribs. This is my bed where I sleep and breathe.

At 6 am I was vaguely aware that soon I would be breathing the aroma of my husband's perfect blend, the earthy scent slipping down the hall from the kitchen, in from the open windows, wrapping me in the warm blanket of the first cup of coffee. Morning breath awaits me. I imagined sliding out of bed, gliding to the kitchen, sipping coffee while the sun rises, drinking the morning up, breathing deep from the day's first blessings, the pure scent of water and bean. Writing haiku. Filling the air with clear, syllabic morning song.

At 6:30 my breath resonated with the staccato beat of four-year-old feet running up and down the hall. Don't. Wake. Up. Your. Sister. Whisper.

At 7 am, pen in hand, I sallied forth to pour coffee in cup, words on page. Did I mention the baby and the four-year-old? What follows is the pure poetry of chaos, holy haiku of hell. OK, I exaggerate a little!

The first haiku is the ONLY thing I managed to write in the morning hours. Then three more, plus a lovely "child-ku," written in true child style with no syllable count, no rhyme, no plan, just random thoughts.

Indeed, the rest of the haiku were beautiful. Then I tried to publish and blogger, or my husband stealing my WiFi, or evil haiku hating gnomes, ate my whole post. This whole thing has been recreated from a beautiful, wonderful first draft. Poof. Into thin air. Thin, horrible computer nowhere land.

In the spirit of breathing and calmly centering onself in the face of adversity, I will try to
recreate the beautiful haiku I wrote tonight before the EVIL GNOMES struck. Thank you for reading. And breathing!



Hot black stream pouring
like summer rain. Cream lightens
tan beauty. Drink now.

Slick dark stream slides down
falling black as nightime rain,
tilt head back and drink.

Hissing steam strikes note
applause splashes cup's bottom
morning chorus bows.

Shining black water
falls like a line of dark stars
cream--the milky way.


Child-Ku, or: Morning Haiku with Thirsty Four-Year-Old

Trying to write haiku
and pour
morning coffee
while four-year-old pours
orange citrus spark
Tropicana Twister.
Neon spray stops pen.
Curly straw,
one,
now two,
too tall for short cup.
Cream will wait.
Coffee will wait.
Words will not.
Syllables slips away into steam.
Hot black moment is gone.

Taking my leave...of leaving

Lots of random thoughts here tonight, so as Steve Winwood would say...roll with it baby!

I have a real penchant for fiction about women who leave. All through my dating life I was a women who left. I was never "broken up with," I always did the leaving, the breaking. I used to wear this as a badge of honor. Now it's just more like a fact. A fact about which a therapist would no doubt have something astute to declare.

My cousin left Vermont at around age 21 or so and drove to Colorado. No map, so the story goes. No destination. No sense of direction. Just packed, got in her car one night at dusk, and headed west. She was immediately my hero. Since then, whenever things have gotten, to my estimation, out of control, or dissatisfying, or boring, I dream of going to Colorado. I have written poems of leaving. I have a novel idea about a woman who leaves, in particular, a mom who leaves with her son on a wild journey. Leaving has always, always appealed to me.

So, I just finished Jodi Piccault's Songs of the Humback Whale. I usually don't like to read what everyone is reading--didn't read DaVinci Code until my mom's bookclub decided to. Didn't read Oprah books until everyone stopped talking about them. I don't do "this summer's beach reads." And, since it seems Jodi Piccault is everywhere, I didn't have any interest in reading her. Wrong-headed, I know. But, two years ago at a used bookstore in Cape Cod, I found this very interesting book about a women who leaves. She has an incident with her husband and takes her teenage daughter across the country, guided not by a keen sense of direction, but by letters from her brother. It is written in 5 voices. I loved the idea a narrative in five voices, especially the letters, and, of course, I loved the leaving!

Two years later, I finally read it. It's great. Unexpectedly, it has changed my idea of leaving. At least a little. At least for now. Their adventure starts off full of promise, full of excitement. It ends badly. And, it ends, for a leave-taking-lover, disappointingly. I won't give it away, but, suffice to say, she did not ride off into the sunset. At least, not in the way I was rooting for.

Adventure. Everyone needs a little adventure in their lives, especially moms, right? Doesn't adventure make you a more well-rounded person? Less boring, less bored with life? Women's travel stories are exotic and enticing. Anne Tyler's fiction about women who leave and change their lives is empowering.

Then, I read a blog about tea. And haiku. And simplicity. And the kitchen. And I realized, some part of my soul wants to travel to Tibet and sleep in a hut, and some part wants to hop in the car and drive to Colorado and be a llama trekking guide, but I can't save enough money to do that. And I like my books, all 1,000 of them (I'm estimating!). 1,000 books just won't fit in a car or on a plane. And I like tea, in my kitchen, with my best friend. I even like margaritas in my living room while I work on my blog and my husband fixes computers in the basement. I would miss him. And I'm not even going to talk about my kids. Now that I'm a mom, the only leaving I'm doing is to the nail place to get a pedicure, and all the better if everyone there is speaking Vietnamese. I'll feel like I've packed my Pathfinder at dusk and left without a map.

Between a tattoo and a mini-van

As I was setting up my laptop tonight, I thought, wouldn't it be great if we had gone out tonight, say, to the little sushi place we love, and I wouldn't be a girl home blogging on a Friday night, AGAIN?! But, no. Here I am, with thoughts in my head, a broken kitchen faucet which my dude-of-all-trades husband is fixing, and not a roll of sushi in sight. Not even a drop of saki. Not that I like saki, anyway. Although I would be happy with a Japanese beer. Except, my nose is so stuffed up I couldn't even taste a beer, and I am way past drinking to get drunk. If I can't taste it, why drink it. But, I digress.

As a mother, I have many conflicting thoughts. Daily. Hourly. Sometimes, like just now, I can't remember what two thoughts are conflicting. Then, like two warring children, they come back to me, each wanting the same sippy cup. As I was pouring a glass of orange juice (can't taste it, but it's bound to do some good), I thought of the girl I saw in the grocery store parking lot, unloading her groceries. Ever the woman, I was comparing her tanned, shapely legs to my spottily off-white mommy legs, her long hair to my current short cut, her hip, working-woman, 20-something, cinnamon-bagel-stick-crumbless attire to my own mommy gear--the jean shorts with a permanent spot of pine pitch on the bottom I've worn all summer, and a not-altogether unstylish strappy shirt (almost said blouse! oh my!). I checked out her sleek, white sports car, her back windows (and her sunglasses) with no fingerprints, and the quiet, QUIET ease with which she was unloading groceries without breaking a sweat, or shoving a stroller out of the way to make room for one more bag of cereal, fruit snacks, frozen waffles and peanut butter Ritz. Then, I watched her open a carton of orange juice and drink it down like she was a marathon runner, just crossing the finish line.

Now, my first thought was, What a pig! At least I'm a woman who doesn't do that in a parking lot! What kind of mother will Barbie make? Then. Oh then. I thought, You know, it would make me kind of a hip mom if I downed a 1/2 gallon of o.j. right here in Price Chopper parking lot. Do you see the conflict? Drink like a sailor (on the wagon) or be a responsible mom? Good example or bad example? For that matter, tattoo or no tattoo? Bikini because I feel like it, or sensible ruffled-skirt suburban mom bathing suit. Superhero lunchbox or neutral, non-violent blue snack bag? Lands End or Walmart? Short, blond, bob or red-highlighted flip? Time-out or spanking? Sesame Street or Power Rangers? Quiet time or adventures all day?

I'm not between a rock and a hard place, I'm between a tattoo and a mini-van. Which, by the way is what I told my son I would have to get if we ever buy a mini-van. I think he said something about Spongebob on my ankle.

Hey, it's just another Friday night in suburbia!

Still Life: Mother Tying Apron on Daughter

I never wear an apron. I love cookbooks. I love Rachel Ray. My husband, darling husband, culinary daddy, does most of our cooking. I can boil water, but can't seem to manage boiling milk for mashed potatoes (yes, instant) without it boiling over. Is this an unfinished conversation or one that never took place? You, dear reader, be the judge! Mom, you're not allowed to answer!

Still Life: Mother Tying Apron on Daughter

I remember the first time
I heard my mother's
philosophy on life.

We were making brownies
for the Troop Seventeen
Brownie Baking Badge,

a sure-shot to win
since my mother, like
all those tied by apron

strings before her, had
a secret ingredient. A
family recipe, hidden like a

skeleton in a closet
and saved for years until
just the right moment for

telling, the right moment
for tasting. This was a moment
to savor, to suck all the juice from.

It was one of our infrequent
mother-daughter cooking-
fests in her kitchen

that gleamed like a highly
polished fender. Highly
praised for its immaculate

immensity, the enormity of its
bounty, by the neighborhood stay-
at-home women. And why

shouldn't they? The sink with
its chrome-like glow, shining
back at them with the gaze

of a thousand eyes, warped
from the slant of the slender,
dripless, silver faucet.

It was here, among
her Corning and Fiesta-
Ware, her cookies and her fears,

from a stove alive with
gas heat and fire, that she
served my father. Served

him on a table ripe with
the promise of nourishment
and the scent of hunger.

And then here, among the brass
pots and braided placemats,
that she served

me with her secret
for survival. Always
follow your recipe.

If you can read, you
can cook. If you can cook,
you can live.

What Do You See in the Clouds?

One of my favorite things to do with my son has always been lying on our backs and looking up at the clouds. He will drop anywhere, anytime to just lie there and look. And, truth be told, I have always kind of prided myself on being the hip mom who, likewise, will flop anywhere, straight-laced suburban neighbors driving by in their SUVs be damned!

Secretly, some days I think he likes to do it because, especially in the summer, it prolongs bedtime. When we are rolling in in our red wagon at quarter to nine after having just had ice cream and a walk around the block, all he knows is, it's dark, it's probably way past my bedtime, how can I make this last? If I pull on mom's heart strings a little, maybe she won't realize how late it is. Or maybe I give him too much credit. Maybe he's just a dreamer and a dawdler, just like his hip old mom!

Here'a a poem I wrote about cloud watching. Probably not one I 'd read to my son. So, are you a cirrus or a nebulous?

What Do You See in the Clouds?

What have you seen in the clouds today?
A horse with wings, leading himself
to water. A blue moon growing month
by month. A carrot in a bowl of fruit,
camouflaged in the midst of peeled mango
and papaya. A pair of young fox
skirting the underbrush.

Have you seen the morning news?
Another car crash,
another roadside bombing.
Antiques stolen, cupboards barren,
secrets whispered
moments borrowed.
All there for your interpretation,
spelled out in blue and white.
Let them turn themselves over
like cards in a fortune teller’s deck,
lazily float on the surface, scatter,
and settle in the breeze
like leaves in a teacup.

So, sit in the sun, open the paper sky,
tip your head back and read your horoscope.
Are you a cirrus or a nebulous?

Not unfinished, exactly

Here is a little something in response to POetry Thursday's Monday prompt: unfinished conversation. It is less about an unfinished conversation, than about what I might say, had I the inclination or the nerve to say it to who it needs saying to.

Ah well. Hope it makes more sense than that last bit of nitwit nonsense. Has Alice in Wonderland taken over my mind? Hah!, laughs my family. You've been this way all the time!

Looking for Berries

Once, when I was looking for berries
red, hot, fat, pulling-the-stem-over berries,
I imagined a time
when I would no longer be looking
for berries, but looking back
on looking for berries.

Even at twelve
that long hot summer before I grew up
that long hot summer of books and laps around the island
even at twelve
or maybe because of twelve
I had a feeling
about life.

About life
and its big moments
and life
and life’s small moments.

A small girl on the cusp of big
I sensed
that hidden in small,
snuggled right up against small’s curved little backside,
somehow,
impossibly,
lay big.

In all the small moments
the strawberry whispered.
I got juice all up and down my ear
trying to hear.

Once, wisdom came while I was looking for berries.
Reached straight up out of dry crumbling dust
and sucked the sweet, pink breath right from me.

What is real
- this berry.
What is now
- this day
- this mother beside me
- that boy
- that shirt untucked
- this town
- this sky
- this sugar scented July
will not be forever.

The berry will be picked
after a fiery fall
a frozen, white time
and a struggling toward green
another will grow.

Another will grow
another will droop
another will scent the air
will defy the dust
will be eaten.

This is what I would say
if boys would listen
and strawberries could speak.

Fruit Lovers

Here is another food poem. I was reading Gayle Brandeis' book Fruitflesh and was inspired. I tried eating ugly fruit for inspiration, but none came. Yuk. Thanks for reading!

Fruit Lovers

Some lament the crude American palate
ruining fruit
cooling, cubing and paring
into crisp neat juiceless cubes.

They say,
these fruit lovers,
that from farm
to grocery
fruit is losing its truth.

What joy,
then,
in the young farm girl
working for pennies
and fresh fruit
kneeling through the summer
in the hard hot dirt
picking berries.

She works beside her mother
a woman farmer
barefoot, too, and braless
in the strawberry field
and when they both
take a break
stop
to uncurve
their moistened backs
and stretch their sunburned necks
they share the truth.

A berry apiece
red and fat from the sun
brushing the dust
from hot pitted skin
carefully plucking the fruit
from beneath its green leaf embrace

biting in lips first
the juice like paint on their chins
warmth of fresh fruit
summer’s love berry
sweet and good
finger staining
fresh picked truth.

One is enough
then they kneel and bend
and begin filling their baskets again.

In the Undergrowth: A Poem About Listening

Here's a piece with some song in it. It's more a meditation on finding a voice, than a poem about a particular song. Finding a voice...one of my favorite themes.

In the Undergrowth

Meditating between seasons
the wife begins to dance.
It is not graceful
or romantic.

On a rocky path
not far from home
she finds at her feet
most of a robin's egg.

She discovers how to listen
to a conversation without joining it,
to give ear to sounds closely,
for the love of hearing.

The wife welcomes the listening.
In summer she climbs high in the trees,
sings the songs
of seven varieties of birds.

A plain gray grosbeak, female,
silvery with just enough gold
black and white to be recongnizable
mentions the secret to life, in passing.

The wife is the lucky listener.
Wisdom rides the treads of her sneakers,
reflection cools her sticky feet, now sprouting
inside her shoes the soft down of new feathers.

She is almost gregarious, her song
a short, uneven warble. She can see sounds,
puts a lens to what she has heard,
finds that purple loosestrife holds

a morsel of someone's truth. Looking up
she spies reason in the symmetry of the vines,
the way they wrap around their host,
hoping to prolong the celebration.

Soon, she will navigate the many bending mazes
of ferns. Here, there is order in the undergrowth,
pomp and circumstance in a royal chorus
of Queen Anne's Lace, four nearby rows of weeds, the audience.

Green. She smells it now. Flowering weeds
waving in tandem. Glorious voices of root
and earth, tangled in a song of life. She sees
the egg belongs here, just where she found it.

Movin' around

"You gotta get movin' around when you're in that whole field there," my husband says to my son as they play Lego Star Wars. My husband was gone overnight for business and you'd think he'd been gone for a month, the way my son kept checking the time. Checking the time with me, of course, as he is only 4, and time is irrelevant, or at least, indecipherable. Anyone who knows me knows time is pretty much irrelevant to me, too. I'm not quite convinced that my flippant answers to "When will Daddy be home," haven't caused irrepairable damage, resulting in years of therapy. Three days. Twenty seven hours. Never. Probably Daddy will never be home is NOT a nice thing to say. But he knew I was kidding. Nevertheless.

At any rate...Daddy's home, and as I sit and blog, finally, I realize I missed this, this writing, like my son missed Daddy. I gotta get movin' around. And, naturally, there's irony. Always with the irony. The X-Box Star Wars playing didn't go as planned. Does anything, whether you're 4 or 34?

(As a sidebar...even my 94 year-old grandmother-in-law says life isn't as she planned, that God is playing a cruel joke letting someone live so long.)

Back to the irony. My son had saved over a game they had already saved, so they had to work through all the hard levels they had already conquered to get back where they wanted to be. It was a hard road, I gather, from the uproar. Which brings to mind the new poetry blog I want to join. Poetry Thursday posts prompts, really good prompts. I feel motivated to write, but sometimes I get stuck and just want to skip the hard thinking, drafting, creating phase and pull out my old work. OK sometimes, but where would I be as a writer if I didn't work hard every day? Yes, husband and son, where would you be as Lego Star Wars players if you didn't work hard every day?

Despite all this, I really, really want to join, so I am working on a song poem and posting now, a food poem I wrote a while back in response to an earlier post. Lame, I know. But, I think the poem is pretty good!


The Sushi Master Slips Up and Makes of His Wife a Work of Art

It was a culinary feat, how he steamed his wife
and rolled her into a knobby white ball,
flattened her with the palm of his hand.
smoothed her,
pressed her into the very edges
of the blue black seaweed wrap.
Pure artistry as he pulled her
glistening arms from the display case
sliced swiftly and evenly two soft pink tendrils
lovingly layered them, one atop the other.
Such surprise when he removed the lid
of the smiling cat
drew out his wife’s head and pop, pop pulled out her red eyeballs
adding them to his signature dish

With just the tips of his fingers
he wrapped wrapped wrapped his beloved into a neat tight roll
and with the flick of a wrist, a glint of silver,
she was four perfect pieces.