Anna Vaught

When we meet love that sees us as what we are, we blossom. And that little flower, a blazon; some heat from a heart we thought we thought desiccant, and a loin we knew to be silent.

There’s a lot of cruelty in our world, isn’t there? Where goggle-eyed dictators and influentials rule what is said. Where men are led by appetites of the wrong kind and lay their table not with bread and herbs but with lust and coldness. It’s like a chess game of moving pieces to gain advantage, and what way is that to live? And you see, if you look closely, and if you get down there and smell the mud, titillate the sand on your tongue and suck at a blade of grass, well now you will taste the acidity that is born of cruelty.

This could be done in a dark kitchen. I like to do it in a dark kitchen because, when I started growing ideas – which he, ironically, helped me seed, plant and nourish – I started to realise that shame can be delicious.

Did you imagine it, or could you see little bites on the pretty biscuit and the desiccated fruit in each lap? And did you trace a crumb on a dainty lip or hear a mew of mastication at each little person?

. I don’t know what fear might take hold or could be murmured. What might be imbibed: spirit or very blood. And none of us knows how hard a bloodless infant can kick when it’s strong from getting all the love.

When you bask in colour, you may push back the horror and what dreams may come, if only for a slender moment. 76
But still you push. And then sometimes you must peel, chop, core, boil and simmer.
Because the push does not work.