cooking lessons
my mother brings only a plastic bag to California.
for you, she says, handing the miniature kitchen
equipment for playing house.
But mainly, so you can cook with me.
& to my mother, I am pressed small by California,
tossed from a hospital window into poppy embers
before the first embrace. first gaze, first word, smeared
in salt wind & trout.
In her steel container, the flour fossilizes her
paper knuckles. she holds my palm to melting ghee.
it will remember you, child.
I know that she is preserving these words in jars of
pickled mango and ginger.
it is what ripe lemons can never give you.
& in the kitchen, my knife cut runs dry of men playing
cattleherd, grazing bruised cornfields when the mines
spit rust & combing the silken dirt of these
fractured ghost towns.
She tells me to protect my fingers.
They are your inheritance.
Fragmented skeletons in river-stained pans & starved,
brass-bellied fish on cutting board.
We fry okra in cumin and coriander, slow, steady.
We eat the bhaji with bandaged fingers.
It’s okay if we sit at different tables.
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*bhaji - cooked vegetable dishes
About the Author:
Sitara is a high schooler based in Massachusetts. Her work has been recognized by the Alliance for Young Writers, the National Poetry Quarterly, and The Afterpast Review. She is also the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Jhumka Review. In her free time, she enjoys painting and spending time with her pets.