Sick Day Food – Rachel’s Site

When she leaves the ginger ale and the bowl of fried rice

behind our door, I almost tell her she forgot

to bring you yours, but like the smell of cooked sausage

and broccoli we’d enjoy after a walk through the snow,

it strikes me like blinding lightning, the growling of

my stomach not unlike a cold rain that freezes

once it touches the skin of my hands— scarred but too soft

to be held, slipping through fingers like the grains of rice

as you stir it in with the eggs and the carrots and the peas,

garnishing it with green onions before you bring it over,

asking me if the fever’s gone down, only to check for yourself

with a kiss gentle as a snowflake on a winter night.

The smell brings back late nights holding hands and

watching stars, then the blade of the chef knife slices my hand

and my heart, the timer of ten years goes off, my hands red

as the little slices of pepper she’s added, her own signature touch,

growing cold as I sit there, my head pounding as you leave me

all over again, and I drown in the sticky brightness, surrounded by

the ice cubes that won’t soothe this fever of the mind.