I'm so sick of the look of this place
this morning. Kate, it's
not you; it's my guts,
it's these words—
though quick-
ly delivered, hot, and livid,
they're thick, swollen, full of themselves—
and yet somehow
this little kitchen talk is perpetually
waning, wearing a bit thin, cracking
in inscrutable-but-
inspiring spiderweb patterns,
like a cool, pretty, mocha-brown
hard-boiled eggshell must
whenever it comes up against
the sheer, glum cruelty of the butcher's block.
Resiliant, you conceed
we should probably
stop speaking entirely. Only then can I read
the silent biographies—libraries
and libraries-
full of them,
in each tiny muscle still tensing
and relaxing in your charitable,
democratic face—and I understand
we're on the same page; we've
agreed, we've achieved some universal
harmony: we're both hungry.
