Love Poem on a Day I Don’t Feel Like Writing a Love Poem

Because I thought I'd wake to another day of just drowning,
all talk with no heed for consequence, all rancor and lies,

I made myself chop garlic and onions until I felt
the sting in my eyes. I stripped lengths of fiber 

from celery, skin from carrots. With my hands
I churned an egg and a half cup of milk into a bowl 

of cold ground meat, feeling a glistening 
resistance even from these things that have 

basically no more life. Free of gristle and fat, dressed
with oil, salt, oregano, and bay leaf— I can shape 

them into loaves or slice them into rounds. 
The air in my house is warm as the inside of a barn, 

thick with the steam of effort. I am neither 
happy nor unhappy. This work has merely fixed 

me here, where I think about who will eat what I
made, carefully following the steps, all morning.

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