Pesto Pasta

Flood lights on a dark street mark the beginning of our night.

At the first store, we are denied entry by two porting yellow vests so we turn on our heels,

head down another frigid rue and into Netto and it’s open and the aisles are mostly empty

I consult a list, red wine, milk, parmesan, cherry tomatoes red red red small packet or large? Basil plant purchased instead of individual leaves, bags filled and hoisted onto black-jacket shoulders

Glossy street and the thin sound of bike tires on water, we walk silent save for our footfall, typing these words furiously into phones

A man approaches from behind a clinking sound like a rusty bike he mutters in German we cross the street and perhaps I focus too much on the journey and not the destination

Street lamps spindly branches against light-polluted sky we turn on Kiefholzstraße a key unlocks a door a button is pressed an elevator entered a 6th floor a welcome mat frayed on the edges.

How much is worth documenting? How much do I leave alone?

When we get in Enzo is in a meeting so we put things away hesitantly but then he finishes his meeting so we put things away faster and with more purpose and sound. I put on music as we put some things away and take other things out. It is Julie Andrews and then Songs To Listen To On Roadtrips and then Disney and of course we know all the words.

Wok of steaming oil, chicken slimy and cubed, I fill a pot halfway with water and put it on the stove, a sprinkling of salt. Tomatoes sliced as Madonna’s tinny voice floats, one melodic line reminds me of Beat It while Emma adds spices, cumin black pepper strewn over sizzling meat and we don’t speak only sing building off one another’s voices and sometimes I go high and Enzo goes low.

I watch Emma as she cuts garlic,

splashes olive oil, fresh

basil ripped from its stem

two, three handfuls and the

             button is pressed and the machine whirs

                         and the green paste spins faster and faster.

I watch Enzo as he dances and Emma as she writes and I write as things happen

and I write after things happen, (as the process of ideation so often goes)

picturing myself to be in the moment they are happening.

Pasta is strained and some pasta water is conserved for the sauce as red tomatoes cook in the juices and oh my god, we place so little attention in things, in our friends, in our food!

As I slide across the hardwood floor in socks to a Lion King tune I am reminded of the passage of time, in these words I am externalizing what would have been internalized, conserving this precious memory prêt à disparaître. The sounds and smells of the kitchen are overwhelming and I have an odd brain deep down I know this even now in bed even days after the plates have been scraped clean because the sounds and smells still permeate my brain and flow out from my fingers and into this document and above all I wonder what Emma has written, I wonder what words she has chosen to represent me, to represent this; I wonder if she, too, has found something lasting in the fleetingness of pesto pasta.