Two eggs. Heavy cream. String cheese, the only cheese I have right now. Italian seasoning as I wait for the fresh thyme and rosemary I’ll grow soon. Butter, more butter than necessary.
A lid for the skillet. Nothing new but something I newly understand as good.
I place the lid, adjust the heat, and walk to my desk. Chapter 4. I’m re-reading, revising. Realizing - that I got most of it on the first pass but not all. And there are twenty threads hanging, like the litter of puppies in an earlier book that Caroline had to write back in for me so that they didn’t disappear like vapor into the ether.
The sizzle of the butter under the eggs draws Percy to the counter, and I hiss like the water bottle to get her down. The omelette is done, the lid the perfect accelerator, the thing that gets the food cooked before I forget I was cooking it.
I plate the food on the square vintage plates I love, the ones with the dove in the middle, gray and mustard bands around the outside. I add pepper from the packets I picked up at Dairy Queen, the ones I use while waiting to remember peppercorns when I’m at the grocery store.
My laptop is open, the cursor flashing on a paragraph I wrote a year ago, about how my protagonist is trying to live slow. I remember all the times I’ve lived this way before and somehow let the breath slip into the jetstream of life again and again.
I hope this time will be different.
The eggs are perfect. Dry but flavorful. I let each bite reach my brain before I put down my fork and add words, erase a few, put some back in.
Outside, the rain is soaking the earth, or here, where I live now, running off the asphalt in the parking lot that surrounds my building. Here, where I am grateful and also longing.
A morning. Like many others. And also, nothing at all like anything else.