Milks And Oils Poem by Tara Teeling

Here in the kitchen,
is a bowl of whipped egg
and another with sour cream,
and I am reeled back,
like a salmon on a hook.

You hated any combination of milks and oils,
spinning your mind with viscous pictures
of the unborn spread out on a plate.
Your face would contort with
a jellyfish madness at the thought of them,
so I took to hiding them in your food;
I did not know that you cannot
force a change.

It was a selfish time:
I worked to convince you
that you loved mayonnaise,
you slowly became more
of what you wanted to be,
growing into it like one would a sweater or
a love which is hidden behind excuses,
all the while thinking that I
would never notice.

It went on for years,
me hiding things in the food and
you trying to conceal your nature.
We told ourselves it was to
protect the other, an act of artless love,
never acknowledging
an unspoken resolution to win.

We were unwilling participants
in our own deceptions, losing balance
with each finished year until
all good intentions went green.

I stopped cooking;
whatever had held us together,
blending us into a whirling,
fluid emulsion, gave way,
leaving all to settle where
it stalled, moving from
the violence of rhythmic flurries,
into the slow, balletic
disengagement of two elements
which would never mix without
constant stirring.

Back in the kitchen,
with whipped egg
in a clear glass bowl,
beaming up like the
froth of the winter sun
and the sour cream,
glistening with purity
like glossy, lacteal snow
in the bowl with the chip on
the green-striped brim,
I am cooled with a
hush of stillness.