writing:
I think about you sometimes when I put butter on my toast. I remember that time you came over last summer and I cooked you chili and cornbread. It was my favorite meal as a kid and one of my favorite narrations of my childhood is making my family eat it during the middle of summer, likely on a beach vacation, likely a hot and sticky day on the 19th of June.
Recently I found out my mom doesn’t remember this and it makes me nominally worried that I made it up in my head, my dreams confusing itself for fond memories. But I’m 93% sure it was real.
Serving us cornbread, and chili, I have butter that’s way too expensive and I put a healthy slab on each of our pieces, letting it sit in the oven a second longer so it can soak into the bread. I portioned our food out. Often we would share a plate when eating together, interweaving small mundane moments with shared intamcity. A very sweet and sacred practice. This time though, we had our own bowls, our own cornbread and our own healthy slabs of butter. Nourishing, sweet, simple - it was all I wanted when i was with you.
Later you tell me how hot it was that I put so much butter on our bread. I assumed that it was the idea of prioritizing flavor, not scared of the rich and nourishing fat that was demonized in the early aughts. As time goes on and you cook me some of your favorite food, you unafraid of the angel disguised as a demon, pouring healthy amounts of butter, oil and tahini for good measure. I deeply afraid of the idea, would get nervous as time went on. Would make me want to watch you serve us food so I could calculate how many calories I might be getting, perhaps serve myself, a creeping anxiety that would crawl its way back to myself.
It's a part of myself that I don’t think will ever leave me until I die. The fear of blowing up like a balloon unknowingly, quickly - out of control. My body betrayed me once, sickness invading my cells, an unknowable cause, an unknowable treatment. Two years of pain, and fatigue, unsure when it will end. The thing is, I’ll get sick eventually, we all will, it’s par for the course, but maybe it won’t feel like betrayal when it’s been another 52 years. I say 52 because I’m almost sure I’ll call it quits at 80. Stick a needle in my veins in another country that calls it legal. That's what sounds most peaceful to me.
I don't really eat toast these days so I don't really think of you much anymore.
music
apologies in advance, these are all tidal links (i know, i know)
spit (power snatch version) - power snatch
training - power snatch
lick the flame - effe
hard - hayley williams
poison - htrk
fiber optic: arena edition - jespfur
cruise control - cowgirl cluesweetest taboo - sade
xx izzy