When you peel your potatoes put your thumb on the side here
Here put some wine on the chicken while you cook it, take the chicken out and then back in with the new broth from the wine.
She wiped her wet fingers on her apron and watched as her mom wiped her hair from her face and refocused on the recipe
fixing her hair she dropped a bit of ricotta cheese on the recipe mixing the ricotta with the oil the sauce and the salt which marked the page
She remembered her mom telling her about first buying the recipe book on a trip upstate with her dad during their first summer together
she couldn’t know what the book meant but saw the oil the sauce and remembered knew it
Surrounding her mother echoed
“So take a good look at my face
You’ll see my smile looks out of place
If you look closer, it’s easy to trace
The tracks of my tears..”
He sat on the chair fingering his plastic wrestler
He looked closely at its small muscles on its legs its tight outfit
and the slight dullness to its shine
Finish your soup she directed
You like it?
Now here have some tortilla
she moved the dark brown sauced chicken to the table moved back to the kitchen for the tortilla and moved to the left to take the meat dish from the shelf
her movements moved behind the small wrestler
he began the soup and her instructions moved around him like the light hum of a 1950’s record player
he couldn’t grasp their meaning their urgency their importance
he heard their calm their constancy that they were there
– jl
Lights in the Hand 