Poetry

Weeks after the pills folded
my grief like an omelet,
I opened a cookbook to taste  

the hollandaise sauce, buttery
and beaming from a spoon
and asked Alexa to turn

the volume up so Sam Cooke
could croon against the cast-irons,
and for the first time

in months, I whisked
three eggs while shuffling
in my socks. I hummed “A Change

Is Gonna Come,” while considering
the elegance of toast,
how the char makes even

the stalest wheat dissolve
on our tongues
in a quick burst of caramel.

Then I opened the package
of thick-cut bacon
as if it were a letter written

in sodium and fatback,
its cursive sizzling in strips
and sopping in grease

that bubbled against my knuckles
which, friends, was a pain
I too toasted into joy—and harried

by heat, I remembered the Germans
have a word for eating
out of despair: kummerspeck,

meaning “grief bacon,” so I sliced
the entire package and watched
the porky sadness shrink

until Sam’s voice grew heavy
with salt, the strips splitting
and spitting and saying only

kummerspeck, kummerspeck,
which is another way
of saying I glided

with a wooden spoon,
dripping yolk across
the canvas of the floor.