The Kitchen, Indexed

A glass knife. A candle. Chamomile.

A handsaw. A hand towel.

A sharps container. Stones

that may or may not be hollow,

holding crystals. Ceramic tributes

to the moon. A no-kill mousetrap.

Carnations. Carnal studies. Blue thread,

to make stitches. Matches, to be struck.

I wanted to understand form,

the beginning of things. I deconstructed.

I stopped a clock, pulled its hands

from its hard face. I undressed

beneath the incandescent overhead.

I couldn’t name myself, but I renamed myself.

In a bowl, strawberries thawed

in their own wet red. I couldn’t think

too hard, which worried me. Because

there was no answer I wanted. To be a man

to be a tree / or something less / like a plank. 

What I saw, I pinned down. I listed

what I knew to be true. Road salt

in an open dish. An hourglass full

of pink sand. A ruler. Assuming what I saw

was honest. The name? It means watchful

(later I found, in Latin, wrath. Oops).

It is my duty, dear reader, to never look away.