Because I thought I'd wake to another day of just drowning, all talk with no heed for consequence, all rancor and lies, I made myself chop garlic and onions until I felt the sting in my eyes. I stripped lengths of fiber from celery, skin from carrots. With my hands I churned an egg and a half cup of milk into a bowl of cold ground meat, feeling a glistening resistance even from these things that have basically no more life. Yet, free of gristle and fat, dressed with oil, salt, and bay leaf— I can shape them into loaves or slice them into rounds. The air in my house is warm as the inside of a barn, thick with the steam of effort. I am neither happy nor unhappy. This work has merely fixed me here, where I think about who will eat what I made, carefully following the steps, all morning.
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