small bites

Manicured lawns and uncomfortable seating look across the harbor, where the clean geometry of new construction gives way to the stubby, misshapen lines of two hundred year old storehouses retrofitted and remodeled for modern times.

I realized just how great the Great Plains truly are for mile after straight endless mile. There was very little romance in it all — but there were certainly a lot of potato chips.

My mother idolized her cousins. Their brood of four brothers and one long suffering sister mirrored my mother’s family of four girls and one boy, adding symmetry.

Hesitant, I glopped a little bit onto a small bit of biscuit and took a tiny bite. Let me tell you, that was some good shit.

I would crack each one open, taking note of the bucolic scenes on each lid, and inhaling the sweet, warm, comforting scent escaping from inside.

In the city, mornings are sometimes the only breath of quiet one can get. The world doesn’t fall asleep as the stars come out the way it does in the woods. It runs itself into exhaustion until sometime around 2am when it finally collapses on the sidewalk.

We feel it in our guts; they tangle and seize and tell us the truth we already know. We taste it in the acrid bile in our mouths when we eat our words. 

The air feels cool, with light stabs of sunshine calling goose bumps out of chilled skin. What does the season taste like, though?

The hike was beautiful; acres of evergreens opening to brindled rock outcroppings, bluebird skies, and a horizon lined with soft grey thunderclouds and sharp angled saw-tooth mountains. I was seven and I hated it so much.

I forgot how wonderful really good bread — nutty and warm to the touch, crisp crusted and sour-sponged, topped with sweet, creamy, salt-studded butter — could be.

Dinner for one is an act of empowerment, a commendation of self. Right now, the world feels difficult to understand, impossible to control, and overall a pretty big bummer. As I heat oil, boil water, and clean dishes, I satiate one hunger while galvanizing another.

Just looking at the restaurant chased the chill off my body. It appeared almost out of nowhere across the train tracks, golden light oozing out like a warm grilled cheese.

I would leave work late and sneak out into the February cold, craving the comforting scent of woodsmoke and miso.

It was an experiment: could we create something magical for people simply by feeding them?