Garlic and Consequences

Written in 2011, edits 2018. 

GARLIC

There is a lime green mug with the Sharpie on paper tape label “GARLIC” in capital letters. The last clove’s browning peel sloughs off as he drops it into his palm. He slices it into small pieces and sets it next to the ginger root. The handwritten directions say to add “Chinese white pepper” but he has no idea what that is, and certainly doesn’t have any in the kitchen. A green pepper gets chopped up instead and he dumps it into a few tablespoons of simmering sesame seed oil.

Cheap peanut butter tastes too salty, but it will work for a sauce. It mixes in nicely, and melts fast. All the forks are bent, but still function to whip up the contents. Fish sauce, soy sauce, and hot sauce are squeezed in to the pot randomly without measurement. Wha-la: peanut butter-ish sauce to give the now-simmering brown rice some kick.

He doesn’t even like cooking. But that is usually because he never has the time or is too impatient and feels time would be better spent doing something else. Then again, there is a corny urge in him to be domestic sometimes especially on a rainy day off. When he is barefoot and the sticky garlic peel gets stuck to the soles of his feet, he somehow feels in a cooking spirit. Weird, but true. He doesn’t sweep up the mess and leaves a massive pile of peels and dishes in the sink.

It is eight-thirty in the morning and he hasn’t even had a sip of coffee. He gave up coffee for tea, but the tannin makes him feel bitter and even a splash of whole milk doesn’t neutralize the flavor. His phone rings and he accidentally drops the fork into the sauce pot.

If There Were No Consequences

I would eat a pumpkin pie blizzard

every day of the week sporting plenty of

whipped cream on top.

And I would go right up to you and

introduce myself without

hesitation.

But, since there are, I will limit the

blizzard intake to once a year.

And you? I will walk right by

as though looking through glass

(though I’m the fragile one here).

And serious questions:

Did you ever meet a coyote that wasn’t sly?

(Did I ask before?)