This afternoon you offer me 
the rest of the mochi.
You compel; no, you encourage;
no, you decline 
to take the last three 
deflated mock-eggs
runny with tangy mango
and sweet ice cream.
 
I remember the last time
I brought you food:
chocolate in the shape 
of an evil eye
that could not ward off
my racing heart
or your migraines.
 
Chocolate tastes 
like ashes to us now.
 
I recall the last time
I cooked for you:
salmon top heavy with orange slices
and sloshed with mojo criollo
from the Puerto Rican grocery store
that’s been closed for ten years;
angel-hair pasta with walnuts,
olives, flecks of red pepper;
cinnamon and chocolate gelato 
for dessert.
 
In some other kitchen,
I chanted food is love
food is love food is love.
                        

Letters clump and crackle, come apart
and dance in humid, afternoon air.
Vowels, consonants, accents, umlauts
bind together, keep out yellowing sun.
 
The flute from the hidden radio
threads the path from room to room.
The small woman with a flashlight
follows, pauses at each curious book.
 
Words dazzle and twirl on each page,
some as large as the kitchen counter,
others as small as a doll’s saucer
perched on the guide’s pink fingernails.
 
One red evening the guide runs out of time.
While clouds outside heap up like dust,
letters catch in her throat.
 
Now there are no words in any language
for woman or book or breath.
                        

This time the stones are scrubbed clean, 
then coated with gunmetal gray.  
Here I breathe in charcoal and paint.
I walk quickly, searching
for what I might still remember.  
 
I try to recall how I walked then,
unaware of heart and breath.
I wore a long skirt to hide thick legs,
to glide over uneven sidewalks,
through tunnels where graffiti grew, 
to walk through Olmsted Park.
 
Its trees are now brick-colored outlines 
I can pass through without touching 
leaves or bark, without hearing birds.
The kettle pond contracts to a rock
to match paint that resists my gaze.
Green, without windows,
towers hover in the distance.
 
I enter the artist’s Emerald Park.