There's Something About Kitchens [fiction fragment]

That night, like many other nights, he said there is something about kitchens, though he could never show me what that something was. When I pointed out to the ice-cubes melting in the red vodka of my Ceasar; he rid me off with a whistle between his teeth saying that was too objectified, materialistic even. When I asked whether it was the gray of the hearth with her living coals and dying ashes, the originary point of community that feeds the warmth of the family; he said I was being too symbolic, that it wasn't that. So I suggested the kitchen as a feminine space to be claimed and reclaimed as a feminist space; but he said I was being too intellectual. I retorted having seen our mums and grand-mas in the kitchen since we were kids; but he said Spivak would ruin his dinner if I went on, just as she had ruined my mind already.

Once, I did ask whether it was about all those small saffron-colored pots, with dried sticks, dark seeds and titian powder in them: spices like our love. To be tasted to the right degree, in just the refined amounts, smelt with a pinch of subtlety, neither too much, nor too little, yet, just right enough to please each other, fresh delicacies everyday (that would last forever?) But he said I was being too romantic. I wondered whether it was our intimacy, the way we fed each other's taste buds and made meals while the rest of the world made love and fed babies. At this point, he took the bottle of wine away saying I had drunk enough for the night.

I never found out what he meant by "there's something about kitchens." But today, as I washed the dishes and did not feel the barely-perceptible breeze of his hips against mine as he passed by; as I didn't feel his hands around my waist and the hungry warmth of his neck poking over my shoulder like an impatient child wanting to see what's on the stove, I realized there used to be something about my kitchen, and this something, used to be him.