After Work

You welcome my nose with garlic, ginger, onion
as I open the door at seven-o-clock.
We dance around each other on the kitchen floor
my chopping and washing an accompaniment
to your soup spoon stirring and spice tadka sizzling,
waves of cumin and pepper wafting through the room.
You wonder if it will soak into our sofa
and I agree, hoping it never leaves, this smell
of you, of home, of warm love and happy dinners.

We sit on our sofa, our intrepid air plant
perched in its tea cup growing out of the cover
of Botanicum center stage on the table,
somehow still holding onto its purple flowers
dried darker upon a tall wheat-colored stalk.
I had never been one to collect such trinkets
but I find myself smiling at this yet again,
at the fact that I cannot imagine our home
without these sweet touches you have left everywhere.

We sit at this coffee table you’ve set with love
with our plants around us and warm dinner within,
my phone open with today’s New York Times crossword
puzzling our way through mystery and frustration.
Sometimes we win, sometimes we don’t, sometimes we speak
so fast it's as if we're having conversations,
sometimes we struggle to find words, sometimes we laugh
at how close we were, how one of us got sleepy
enough for us to stop and get ready for bed.

#NaPoWriMo 9/30