truth or consequences .

Today in the kitchen I heard a familiar song and I felt as if someone took and wrung out my bones. Three years ago, in North Berkeley. It wasn’t nearly as cold as this, and you were coming home to me. We were cooking our clams and artichokes with blue cheese and Berkeley Bowl bread and tall boys of IPA. What love and grace I have seen, plowing head-on through the driving rain to King Street, that day after our president got elected and you spent the night drowsy, and fell asleep before the pasta was done cooking. What have I now? A candle in the shape of an artichoke and tea brewing, as before, and my cold roomcave twice as big as the one we called ours. “In my bedroom, after the war.”