Kyle Elshoff

“Aubade with Cutlery and Crickets"

In the dinner I cook for myself tonight,
you are an open drawer of cutlery.

I've smelled the top notes of butter knives
at your shoulder, the tang hidden in the blade

of your walk. I need a serving spoon
to scoop dal into a cool ceramic, a fork

with tines long enough to pierce the skin
of the butternut squash roasted

in honeyjuice. Even your hands
have become a kind of instrument—

delicate enough to slide crabmeat
out of the shell, sturdy enough to crack

a breastbone if need be. Or maybe what
I smelled that morning still full of starlight

and crickets when we said goodbye—
was the clean coolness of a knife's ricasso,

the flat rest for a thumb just before
the blade disappears into its handle.”
― Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Oceanic