SOLITARY DINING

Often it’s the easy things that satisfy, like a bowl of noodles with char siu and fresh green vegetables eaten late at night, with only the lights from outside. You don’t need to see in very great detail, your chopstick co-ordination is fine. You know where your mouth is, right? Good.
Just imagine the red edge to the meat, the smooth ivory hue of the chopsticks, the sheeny glistening of the stock, speckled with chopped chives.
All still darkly visible in the half-light at the window.
Food is entirely about comfort.
And suggestion.

If there were someone else for company, there could be warm light.
But the same food. Just a bit more of it.

There is a useful elegance to holding chopsticks and a bowl, that merely shoveling with knife and fork cannot possibly duplicate.

Plucking the skeins of warm slithery noodles and lifting them to the mouth.
The airborne morsels carefully pinched, lifted upwards to the lips.
Slurp noodles, savour the juicy freshness of the bokchoi.
With both hands raise the bowl to drink the broth.
Enjoy the remaining heat of the porcelain.
Smooth comfort within the hands.
It was very nice soup.
One serving.

Darkness brings me memory-whisps of trees and rain.

The washed dishes are in the rack, near the kitchen window.
Pajama pants, loose shirt, drifting doze.
There should be crickets.
A far-off sound.
Sleep.


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