Burns

I don’t remember the injury.
The pot of roiling water knocked off
the element, the cascade of scorching drops
splashing slow-motion through the frozen air.
I didn’t see her there, she’d say afterwards,
again and again, her face abashed
and lit with love. I imagine her horror
when it happened, the sound of her shriek,
the rush to embrace and inspect for damage.
The avalanche of her relief
when I stood there, whole, spotted
like a leopard but unharmed, too surprised
to wail. The pain, what there was
of it, too foreign for my soft, still-forming
mind to grasp. Probably it had been my fault—
lurking around her legs in the kitchen
like a neighbourhood cat, rubbing up
against her good smell of talcum powder
and rhubarb pie. I remember the afterwards,
how she handled me with such care
for days. As though I was newborn
again, unbroken by the rough passage.
Almost reverent in my presence, her slim
pale hands rubbing ointment in circles
onto my body like a blessing.

A decade later, her own arms would be scarred
with burns like a chef’s, from the hours
of angry labour in the kitchenA decade later, her own arms would be scarred
with burns like a chef’s, from the hours
of angry labour in the kitchen—
the slamming of hot wok onto the stove,
the splash-back of spitting corn oil.
Spoons and knives hurled into the sink,
cutting board slapped onto the counter.
A cacophony of pots and pans yanked
from cupboards, the crackle of sizzling
stir-fry like flames in hell—
beneath it all the ballad of her frustrations,
a spoken-word diatribe accompanied
by kitchen implements.