Planche de Chair Cuite

She was not invited She was arranged They never wanted Jasmine not the woman who brought basil-clean hands and pomegranate soap who harmonized soliloquies into pastries while they offered only hinges rusted shut She was not guest She was garnish Not Jasmine the flower but Jasmine the bulb strangled in its own clay frost biting at the marrow buried beneath their polite rejections She spoke once deliberate deliberate If they must eat me let them chew gently She coughed candied TB They dabbed napkins They did not hear Their mouths were full of false forgiveness they never meant to swallow I did not mourn my wife I prepared her Not with grief but with brine and balsam I weighed her mercy in ounces Glazed her regret with saffron Pressed juniper into joint tied thyme to tendon She was not embalmed She was emulsified She was not buried She was basted I laid her upon the charcuterie board the very board once deemed too rustic for their hosting Now it would hold truth They came as they always came teeth lacquered for appetite grief corseted in black velvet Heels ticking like guilt's metronome They hovered They hunkered They hungered Is that veal No Something richer It finishes like fine wine rinsed in rosemary They did not recognize her They had never truly tasted her before infused braised I smiled cleaver-clean And in one tremor one breath too human I heard her voice behind my ear They chew too quickly slow them down Still I served By dessert their cheeks flushed with meat-salt One moaned that her tongue felt redeemed Another sighed that something inside was singing They laughed They praised the reduction They took seconds They did not taste her life only her labor lacquered in glaze salted with absence When they left chairs scraping back their guilt like confessional doors the room emptied of hunger but not of presence I remain The cellar exhales marrow-cold Her portrait governs the shadows no oils no frame Just aspic and regret Beneath her apron sanguine-stiff and rosemary-scented bind with singed benedictions And pinned below the final course a recipe card salt-stained signed not in ink but glaze To serve cold Always cold In her own hand To Love Well Is to Eat Eternally She said this first They say it now I slice her memory thin upon my tongue She lives between chews but sometimes I taste her scream beneath the salt a rasp beneath the glaze Sometimes the knife shakes Just a tremor A shudder The cellar breathes back cold heavy watching And in the gathering damp dark I hear it still the sound of gentle chewing I never stopped serving I never stopped tasting She never stopped feeding them