Winter Kitchen

The windows fog with everything we've made— the stew, the bread, the kettle's weary sigh— and past the glass the garden starts to fade to grey, then white, then nothing. Let it try. In here the radio remembers songs my mother sang while peeling back the years of apples, turning patiently the wrongs to sauce. The steam conceals but not the tears she thought she hid. I saw them, even then, the way a child sees everything and stores it somewhere deep, to understand it when she's old enough to recognise what's hers. The kettle fills. The table's simply set. The door stays open, so we won't forget.