THERE ARE MANY THINGS I AM BETTER AT THAN YOU

an ode against culinary dexterity

In that moment she was not a girl but rather something adjacent, something neanderthal, the being before. Indulging in the briefest return to a village distant and twice-glancing, themselves burrowing even further back than such a road had shot her.

It’s funny how the yolk of anonymity, oozing between the sourdough’s wounds, will find a tongue that greets it by name. It separates the two of us. This is simply what alienation is. A taste of air that shatters the facade of understanding.

I served it before you dissected from its innards, not intentional by any means. A poached egg-white and its poached nucleus, two misshapen bulbs sitting spaced and juxtaposed like two strangers on a train who are probably polite, you’d hope.

I am learning to live away from my mother and hence I stand before you in a kitchen that no cat shall ever be swung in. We are learning that it’s most appropriate you be dubbed the cook between the two of us. I am learning this but you probably expected this dynamic to manifest palpably, with your fucking steak tartare. Who the fuck teaches themselves to cook a steak tartare? Who first mentioned it, on that same couch, offhandedly funnelling into words the contents of her black mirror browsing, and in the syllables that floated heavenward birthed a version of you who could whip up the steak tartare of her sacred consciousness-streams? You can poach an egg, you’ve probably made her see God. In my prayers to some misplaced jigsaw of a higher power I asked if we could meet with neo-Aphrodite for supper, together, naked and buttery and guffawing with every part of each other’s bodies except the mouth. But alas, at present time the evil overhead kitchen lights cast their judgment upon my pathetic excuse of a poached egg and our vessels, clothed and empty like whipped cream atop nothing and my fingers twist around the left tablecloth corner and your mouth twists into some serpent awakened as into it’s jaws slips my handiwork. You’re waking up it’s happening oh my god you’re waking up I knew it no no god no.

THERE ARE MANY THINGS THAT I AM BETTER AT THAN YOU DID YOU KNOW THAT. I sewed this strappy red frock I am wearing and it took great patience and I don’t think you sewed that plaid button-up of yours but I could prove it if you provided me with closer inspection. I am probably better at karate because I took a class when I was little and I like to write sometimes so I’m probably better than you at that too. No no no nothing fiction like that rather just pennings of the molten onyx that is exiled sickly sweet like pangolin’s tears from the pulsating pores of my sandstone mind palace into a fervent chocolate moat yes yes we are working tirelessly to mitigate the recent tadpole infestations no no you may not read some. Just know that I am better than you at it. And when you first submitted to patronage in my memory it was not you but rather Pinky Bear whose muzzle met the alcove of my neck. The creatively-named Pinky bear has been a pursuer of my courtship for much much longer than yourself. Competition amongst my suitors really is rampant beyond what the people get to see. She makes up in history for what she lacks in moisture, simulates your lips in all their polyester plumpness brushing, burrowing, a wombat retiring to my collarbone. I could snipe a wombat with unbending precision, char its breast across woodfired coals, and serve it before you with a resounding flop and I reckon the serpent, eyes conventionally cast skyward in ignorance of it’s prey, would twist it’s stained tongue at such sickness. Experience is sickness to you. Filthy hypocrite. Breath invades the barrel. I ask you, if this “sickness” is simply alien? I must ask you now because the food is going cold so I must ask you now. There are many things that I am better at than you and I have decided one of them must be pulling the trigger.

The yolk breaks; and with its sliver of dichotomous milieu has surrendered to threads of steam, fashioning a cocoon. I am not a pretty girl who cannot cook but rather something adjacent, something neanderthal, the being in-between. Whipped cream atop what you can never prove wasn’t masterful. This is what understanding is; a flushed hand that slips tentatively beneath the cotton of alien.

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This conniption of mine was graciously published in Nowhere Girl Collective’s February 2025 Issue, “FOLIE À DEUX”. Cherub tends to her pretty brain knowing it has made Dakota Warren feel something, in Dakota Warren’s words. Sugar-free pancakes in bed for my pretty brain.