How many times have you ended up past midnight in the light of the 
refrigerator?  If Edward Hopper’s nighthawks had kitchens, they wouldn’t be so famously blue. 

Even though there’s caviar, lox and baguettes on the dining room table, the guests still gather in the kitchen amid empty bottles and the turkey's 
picked-over bones. 

A meal has already been prepared for the priest brought in to bless the 
house. 

Recipes for which you lack saffron or oyster sauce are seductive as  travel brochures and their unreal photographs of happiness. 

We leave the womb twice--once from our mother's body, and once from her kitchen. 
 
How strange the kitchen is after the funeral.  No one can find the gravy 
boat, the pickle fork, the candles salvaged from the last birthday cake. 

Who would think to list in an obituary that the kitchen outlives its cook? 
 
 

Copyright 2001,  Marc Sheehan