food
Updated: 5 days ago
food
food is a legacy
the women in my family have
long carried on.
sitting on my
tiled kitchen floor
watching Nani knead
dough after dough,
scented marzipan vanilla
of the Portuguese history
her ancestors left.
my orange headband is
too big for my head;
my hands too small
to help.
the kitchen is
my mother's
sacred space. she
doesn't make kaju scented
marzipan but
she pours vinegar
in sorpotel like
she was born for the moment.
she watches fat drip down
succulent bacon as she
adds thicker slices
of pumpkin to
the sambhar she's
making my father
to show how much she loves him.
but growing up
my hands burn everything
they touch and so
when we road trip around
a white man's country
I am kicked out the trailer