Letters, blue

I want a warm, sunny day to bring me a blue inland letter at my door. I want your name on it, because names are beautiful, little things that aren’t loved enough. Write me a recipe, will you? Not borrowed from books or the Internet, but something that has sprung out of your madness and instinct and unbearable hunger, or even better, handed over to you with the pride of a legacy. Let not the measurement of ingredients be in cupfuls or spoonfuls; instead, share with me their weight and lightness like you would a poem. Tell me more about the smells that found home in your hands, when you rinsed, picked, chopped, crushed, pounded and discarded. In the margins, write to me the verse of the song that you hummed while stirring the pot or while looking out of the window as you peeled garlic. Was it a crow or a sparrow or a pigeon that fluttered boldly over to the windowsill, hoping you would hold a morsel for its beak? I will be happier knowing that you have learned its language. That you stopped to look into the bird’s eyes when it looked into yours. I also hope you remembered someone lovingly while the flavours melded in the pot, and I hope it was someone who had once made your eyes burn just like those onions did. Gather all of it in your hands – the songs, the memories, the tears, the steam, the smells, the fire and the tired sheen of the cooking pot – and place it on a blue inland letter. Drop it in the postbox down the road that is mostly empty these days, much like what you and I have become. Send me a recipe, will you? I am waiting here, hungry to eat up a mundane moment from your life.