Over Green Beans and Garlic

by Janice Scully

Concentrate me, my love,
like a thick sauce.
Watch me trim and heat
the beans. Your eyes say: cautious man,
suspicious of knives
even in the hands of cooks.

You’ve never been taught to cook,
poor baby, or love?
I see the way you carry a knife
for protection, not for conjuring sauce.
By my stove, a man’s
safe in the heat.

I’ll squeeze past to fire the heat;
it’s time to cook.
The onions are prepped. You man
the pot. Yes. Snap off my hat and shoes. Love
me like a green bean in the buttery sauce.
Forget the knife.

There’s no need for a knife;
green beans break clean. With slow heat
sauce
seeps from our very pores as we cook.
Onions, beans and love,
can convince any man.

Garlic intoxicates, too, and men
stronger then you have given up their knives,
making love,
unhinged by the heat
and the smell of the sauce
on the stove of a cook.

Loneliness ebbs when I cook.
“Nice,” says the man.
It simply dissolves in the sauce,
cut together without even a butter knife,
a stirred-up love
better with time and heat.

I bathe the cook top, splashed with sauce,
grateful to the man,
his knife and his heat.

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Janice Scully lives in Syracuse, New York and writes poetry, fiction and non-fiction for children and adults. A physician, she writes a blog entitled. “Medicine and Health in Children’s and YA Lit” at http://janicescully.blogspot.com.