It's Still Life

At an Intersection Named After an English King and a Saint
Six Sentence Story: Part 26 Navigating a Debris Field

last week: Pierre will have to stay here with us; we will clear out the storage room for him,” I say, and Hanzō nods silence; it is the heart of a noble relic that agrees.

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Navigating a Debris Field

Twilight tucks into Arpége … the scent of jasmine finding its way through the open kitchen window as apparition-like-steam rises from a simmering pot of beef bone broth. The stainless steel workbench is scrubbed clean under Hanzō’s knife; it flashes and slices beef thinly, cubed potatoes and carrot, onion, dashi, soya sauce …

… and I sort through a damp, collapsing box of oddments inherited from my mother’s kitchen: a magpie-collection of souvenir spoons, mismatched plates, lidless jars, and rusty cast iron … “Don’t buy anything just yet”, Mum had said, “soon all this will be yours,” … but the box remained untouched in the storage room, the one that will soon to be Pierre’s room.

Hanzō lifts and drops questions on me from time to time, his face calm and sculpted under the kitchen lighting, “These are treasures?” he asks, and I answer with a shrug as I flick off little squidgy foam shapes scattered about like a debris field on my arms, clothing, and floor.

“My mum,” I say (my inner voice escapes its well practised restraint), “sang to apples so they’d ripen perfectly, and she sewed cotton bags around the best fruit to protect them from wasps”, (and then re-harnessing my inner voice, I think to myself), Sadly, I didn’t inherit the apple trees.

Hanzō places a bowl of faintly sweet yet savoury broth with beef, carrot, onion and potatoes on the table in front of me, a sight not meant to be appreciated through eyes alone … and he says, “It’s *nikujaga, it’s proper beef stew – eat, Brigid, you must eat; your face is becoming a famine.”

And so we eat, our wordless language and thoughts drawing in breathy scents.

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*the recipe of Nikujaga. Written for Denise’s Six Sentence Story including the word “foam”. Some artwork is created using Midjourney AI, and is identified as such in the ALT text or captioned. Images are copyright and not to used without permission, which I willingly give when asked, and when not for commercial use. Imagery and poems/prose ©Misky 2006-2024.