The Soup Kitchen

The Soup Kitchen She made soup that kept the whole town warm One by one they’d line up and request their usual The soup experience was mid-way Between pleasure and torture As the limits of the taste-buds and the palates, Unaccustomed to the spices of the Islands Were put to the test She ladled out the hot stuff, laid it on thick And, as if not to be outdone The compliments were equally effusive The red-faced customers, perspiration Dripping from their faces, ever ebullient Would soon be on their way, leaving generous tips She would continue to stir the big black pot Adding ingredients, stoking the fire Never taking her eyes off the bubbling, hot soup Nursing it, churning it, tending to it like a child Staring into it as if the answers to life’s questions Lay therein, like the soup was to her What tea leaves are to a soothsayer She may not have had the answers to life’s questions But many a truth was poured out to her in the ‘heat of the soup’ (kitchen) The kitchen was a ‘safe house’ where people could leave their secrets (People dropped their secrets like they were hot) Little did they know that keeping their secrets was an impossibility It was mid-way between pleasure and torture As, unlike her big black pot, she was unable to hold Steady. She would eventually fall over and the secrets Would pour out, scalding the entire town