Preston Mark Stone
V2:E12 December, 2000
RICE
All I have is a city of ghosts
dreaming they’re alive.
When I was first alone, they’d knock
and I’d let them in, watch them
sheepishly walk to the kitchen
and place their clammy mouths
under the tap.
It’s terrible to watch the dead drink.
Now, having been alone for years,
they know what to expect:
they no longer knock, just stumble in
dragging their luggage behind them,
turning all the lights on as they go.
Even the kindest of them track dirt
everywhere, and the meaner ones,
with their toe tags and crooked jaws,
have broken all my mirrors.
To escape the shouting
I go to the kitchen, push through
the gulping dead, fill a pot
with water, and make rice.
Suddenly the house is silent
and the pot has an audience,
the plosives of steam followed
by dozens of cold, wide eyes.
I never would have guessed it:
the dead are fascinated by rice.
It’s something about the sound
or the smell, the grain softening
like bone returning to flesh.
What are you doing? they ask.
Where did you learn that?
Is it alive? I learned this
from my mother, I tell them.
And yes, it’s alive.
As I eat I watch them timidly
hunch away, afraid
of my living mouth. They think
I’m some sort of cannibal,
a ghost who eats earth.
One or two of them touch my chest,
feel the tentative pumping
of my heart, and begin to weep.
By morning I’m sweeping up
broken glass and splinters,
and the house has returned
to its old loneliness.
Now, all I have is rice.
I cook to remember that I am alive.
I eat to return to the living.
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