Cocina

The romaine snaps sharply with a satisfying crunch between my fingers. You worry so much that your hands are rougher than mine. I worry that I can't get any callouses. I try. I work in the garden, in the fields, in the machine shop, and storefront. I turn wrenches like the rest; lift boxes, lift weights, but the callouses rarely come.

When they do come, the are quick to peal and will wash away under the hot water when I scrub laundry or soap dishes. My muscles don't grow like yours either, or at least don't show. We work together and get stronger, me stronger faster than you, but you with the lines, with the lines. and the lines down to your hands, and feet. Your hands are so scoured, so grooved so mountainous.

I would whisper "cotton pickin.'" and you would slap me away knowing those words could hurt other folk, and I know the could but I have picked cotton and you haven't, yet you have the hands. Not that I want you to pick cotton. I don't want to pick cotton anymore. I have other things I can do with my hands. Still, you worry and buy product and paste to smooth your hands, your skin your feet, and it only helps a little.

I am the one who holds your hands the most, and I say it doesn't matter, but they are your hands and you have them. Mine, mine are a soft worry. In a place like this, I worry, when the revolution comes, will they think I am one of them? One of the aristocrats, the *boushwah*? Will they forget the times I was next to them at the lathe? Or will they forget that I held the hopper when they moved the last bale? Will they forget my grease soaked hair as I hand out fried panna for breakfast on the line so no one has to leave or get left behind? Yes I write, but I write about us. About here. No one here can make a living by writing. I don't write about what either side does and no one would believe it if I did so why bother? But I still fear, dread, being shoved up against the wall because of my soft hands when the revolution comes.

Still, the peppers are chopped, the garlic and onion diced. The pots have their little hot spring surface of pops and roils to confirm the magic brewing under the skeen skin surface of lard-fat-oil-simmer-smooth. The small steam geysers smell of beans and lentils, cardamom, turmeric, cumin, swirling in little steam carousels rising from the stove. There are more spices. More spices to come. We will use spices.

There is flesh. Meat. Carne. It was pulled from the fire, hot-naked seared, scorched, sizzling branded, burnt. Now is the time to press the meat into the bowl. The sauce squelches as the tenderloin slides. Cutlets are adjusted and shoved in the hot marinade. Juices mix and mingle as meat is pressed hard against the sides of the vessels, then pulled back slightly leaving room for more savory liquid, to consummate,in the heat of the oven while all of the ingredients stew.

And then there is you. I don't know how long you have been standing at the threshold. I have seen you out of the corner of my eye as you go back and forth to our friends outside. You wanted to check on me? You wanted to be able to tell when them when the meal will be ready? It will be ready when it is ready. It will be ready on-time. It takes time, and heat, and motion to make the meal... savory to the point of satisfying.

I feel your whole body as you move past me. You press up against me to "look at what I am doing" in this small space. You lean against me to grab the glass, the only cool thing in the kitchen and take a pull, setting it back on the counter, but not where it was, not where I put it, so you know I know you are there. I turn just enough to watch you press your firm ass against the countertop, hands by your hips as you lean over the half prepared ingredients that

I am trying to bring together for the meal. You slide press yourself up so you are sitting on the counter. Have a better view, stay out of my way, you insinuate. I know what you want. You let what passes for shorts bunch up to your hips exposing more thigh than was originally on the menu. I don't blame you for the choice in clothing. It could have been a swim suit. It is hot enough, and though no one has taken to swimming, the pool is there, just on the other side of the doors. We can see it, past the shades and the deck chairs beautiful cool and blue. But here it is hot.

Hot and red and I think you need an appetizer to get you out of my hair so I can finish and we can all come together for a meal. I can just see the bottom of your cheeks peaking out from under your shorts as you have your heals on the counter trying to keep your balance on your cliff. You are perched there. Some sort of lost bird-of-paradise panhandling in the hottest cocina for miles. I am not in the same mood, but let's see what makes you sweat more, the heat or the chemistry.

Two big handfuls of mint and cilantro pressed between molar and tongue. Tongue to cheek, cheek to molars, tongue snapping lines of poultice like Cancan dancers through stem and leaf to express the (aptly named) volatile, organic, compounds. Essences, to be, to exist in a kiss that presses my mouth on your own supple tenderloin. I let the juice of the spice roil in my saliva as I gnaw furtively-but-fruitlessly against your flesh.

Oh your hand now? Over to your need, yes, I won't deny you but discretely as we have guests, and I have one more ingredient. I break the cayenne quickly to fours, splayed out so expressed capsicum is unfurled. To my tongue and lips. To your thigh, left then right, alternating each sides spiral as we close to the core. The flit and need to press both lines at once more of a mad-murmur than a hum for the hummingbird, extracting-pollen, pollinating, but then, then, then, your hands. Well, it's in your hands.

And I have to check the place settings.