Food, drink, love and disappointment

1:

every sunday i tell you i love you

in 1/2 a kilo of mutton

six whistles of a pressure cooker

and tender mutton curry.

2:

indian mothers won’t tell you they love you

they’ll ask about water,

“have you had water?” “want water?” “can i get you water?” “have water, you’ll feel better,” “let me fill your bottle” “you look like you need water,” “here, drink this?”

3: from ‘A Cookbook for Fuckbois’, pg 125:

take 125 grams of unsalted butter

lay it on thick, pour a dash of rum

whisk in three compliments and

one cruel observation

let it simmer softly

slip in a “let’s just be friends”

don’t stay for dessert.

4: note on a refrigerator:

old rice makes soft pongal

rotting bananas- sweet bread

what do i do with the love we had

now that our relationship is dead?

5:

today when i dipped a biscuit in my tea

a corner broke off and

slowly sank into its hot brown depths

which is when i thought of you

and how you once called

your floaty-soggy tea biscuit

“a tiny broken corner of pangea”

it’s been so long since you left

i’ve almost completely forgotten you

but each time a biscuit falls apart in tea

i feel a little broken too.

6:

there were ghosts in the gosht we ate today

did you hear an old cook’s song?

taste a grandaunt’s salt and onion tears?

find sorrowful histories in the marinade?

this is a recipe from too long ago

and along with the mutton, the onions, the ginger and garlic

hundreds of years have been

dum pukht and slow cooked

into this gosht full of ghosts.