by Katie Olson Afshar
He chopped with a handmade santoku knife
postured like a man guiding a dance partner,
without force in his shoulders, pausing every so often
as if to let an onion contribute
to its own disintegration.
Back then, I was the more accomplished one
and as a way for him to be the teacher
he demonstrated how to brush-clean
chanterelles, breadcrumb squash blossoms
dry-sauté shishitos.
I learned to love the vegetables he had traded for
with other vendors at the Tuesday market
produce made cleaner by the absence of money
rootlets trembling with dirt and dew
in the peak of a harvest lasting just one week.
l wanted this new food, not knowing exactly why
and let myself get hungrier than before
so when I did eat there was a meeting
on the crest of sensation
appetite having climbed far up one side
sustenance having climbed up the other.
We rode mountain ranges at the table.
What I was becoming
was exquisite
for hours the bright food still alive in my body.
Sometimes after a morning of selling bread
he came home cradling a dozen oysters
or hugging a pastured flank of lamb like a newborn
wide hands around the wax paper
what they handled became almost precious.
Fat simmered for hours that September
tomato and cinnamon, hunger expanding
like vapor in an anvil.
I let myself get hungry
and I stayed away from him
in order to savor him,
In order to save myself.
Katie Olson Afshar is a writer and a pediatrician with a deep love for the human body, but conflicted feelings about modern medicine. Her work has appeared in The Sun, Catamaran and Hunger Mountain, among other journals. She lives in the California Bay Area with her husband and daughter.