Nancy

Nancy bought kitchenware obsessively

little rows of silver

she’d polish until she could see right through

x-ray her own liver

She enjoyed the sound the kitchen drawer made

when she rolled it back and forth

she’d stand over the spoons and scatter them

meditate herself into them

she liked to entertain- would hold parties in rented rooms

splayed out on a chaise-longue and blinking

she’d spend all the hours staring at her reflection

in the ball of her wine glass or the rims of her grandmother’s dishes

Nancy thought she was in love and she commodified herself accordingly

a suitable housewife all shiny and smooth

and like the virgin men preyed on her for

became nothing but the stainless steel her own hands held

The shelves and the steak and the vegetable stock; Nancy

became inseparable- her body bent

and spent away at mealtimes-

she gave herself willingly

like a woman. She laughed; salt in water

she could disappear at the stir of a spoon

stuck in a tall glass

like a bottle of oil

a fluid cascade clinging to water Nancy

did not exist but against the cold surface of a

sharp knife and chopping board

a woman that’s a woman at last.