Secrets in Slow Cooking

I want to talk quick

fast and urgent and

Pleases don’t interrupt me

And I know I’m sort of raising my voice

Which comes with raising pace

And I’m not even making sense

You can barely hear my muffled words

And the tension between the days it takes

To admit the desire of words

And the time it takes to collect them

Keeps pulling me forward 

like a ferry on a line

with the thrill

Of terror or joy on the shore

Jump scare reaction either way and

Maybe it’s better to be disappointed at being hopeful

Instead of disappointed in what you hoped for

It’s all kind of foggy to me 

as I flip open the lid

Of my roiling mind, going over itself

Sputtering onto the heat coil

Of all our not-conversations sitting in my mind

Recipe cards that weren’t quite right; in accuracy or resource

and I removed the pot okay?

I don’t want a mess of 

what we’re trying to make

I stir it and put it on low, admiring the diligence it asks

Adding the right things at the right time

Not wanting a burnt flavour I didn’t intend

To blot out the delicate spices of

Our privacy together, the dash of secret

When our eyes meet and no one else is

In on what we’re making, no-one else knows the truth of our flavour

And I want to talk fast to get it all on paper, but I choose to go slow

To cultivate a many layered thing

With times to dry and imbue and become potent

In the way that quickness never can

This is how I learn to create something lasting - even if only in memory