ManicDDaily

Lonely in a Florida Kitchen Morning

The words “low fat” do not feel like friendly greetings but name calling–hoots from the side lines of cabinets, shelves, fridge–they shout from every vantage point–”low” a descriptor of her brain state; “fat” an appellation for her personal container.

Though in her case, it’s more a heaviness of mind than body; too many unloseable layers.

As she shifts through the cupboard, “natural” clangs in.  The straight faces of the boxes frankly amaze her–she, who knows perfectly well that cardboard does not shout in nature–

“Whole,” sneers the double-plasticked.

She remembers apples.

They too are body-bagged.  Still, a burst of fellow feeling lifts her as she bends into the crisper to grab one, crunch.

Or rather, not crunch.  But as something like sustenance syrups down her throat, her sense of good and evil is also re-affirmed.

She feels like an interloper withdrawing, she and her prize, as if she should back away,  as if, like a time traveler, she should do everything in reverse.  She hears at her back the silent fury of the “fiber,” the glares of the cornered cellophane–all those individual wraps of what were once food stuffs–so angry–as if she were the one who had labeled them–

And then, just as she steps back to the spare bedroom,  she catches at the roof of the neighboring house, a pane of sky.  How is it  so perfectly blue, so blankly solidly blue?  How does that happen here?  Almost every day?

She goes back to the counter, reaches deep into one of the boxes.  Breakfast cereal from a pseudo health-foody company, bought, she suspects, especially for her visit, or perhaps, one of her prior visits.

The oats and all the other stuff that make it–that is, what is left of oats and all the other stuff that make it–are shaped into little tan hearts.  Too sweet, her mind says, as she crunches, too refined.  She reaches down for another handful, and then crunching, another.

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Here’s a little sketch done while traveling.  I am having a hard time posting, and so although I was in part inspired by Shanyn’s wonderful prompt on dVerse Poets Pub, about looking out a window, I am not linking this anywhere as I fear I will have a hard time returning comments.  The photo is of a Florida sky, but not as clear a one as that described in the piece.