2005-01-06
Boiling Spaghetti Over An Open Heart

And, marveling that it had once seemed impossible to her, she laughingly explained to them that this was much simpler and that now they were both content and happy. But this dream weighed on her like a nightmare, and she would wake up in horror.

I closed and laid the book aside, sliding my fingers across the uneven pages. I arose from my position on the low stool where I had rested my back against the single corner door of the built in rotating spice cabinet. The oven with the black handled pot of boiling water chortled before me. An absent gaze through the steam showed me an emptiness that seemed to be longing to be filled. I cocked my head and stared into the emptiness, mirroring it to souls and heads and dreams. But a sharp hiss as a hot droplet leapt from the pan and onto the glimpse of my bare skin �twixt my shirt and low jeans recalled me from my dazed wonder. I winced in pain from the searing of my tender skin and turned to the open half full bag of spaghetti noodles before me.

I eased the noodles out of the bag and with a great effort, snapped them in half. I watched in half conscious fascination as little bits of unevenly held noodles scattered into the trashcan beneath my hands. Broken hearts and broken lives and broken souls trickled through my fingers. No, no, broken fear. Broken spirits? Deconstructed lives, tossed aside with carelessness. In slow motion I moved the noodles over that boiling pan, and emptied both of my grasping fists. The noodles sunk into the water and quenched the boiling pleading. It ceased its chortling and hissed with contentment, blowing up clouds of warm steam. The emptiness had been filled. Calm it was again.

But calm it would not be for long. The boiling would begin again. Oh oh, not even that can satiate you.

Not even that�

I sunk onto the stool, and slid my back down the kitchen cabinet. I closed my eyes and a dream flitted across the back of my eyelids. I unclosed my lips and a long, slow sigh escaped its prison and mingled with the warm kitchen air.

Not even that?

before & & after