In That Kitchen

In that kitchen we try so hard to make food, but try even harder not to get called a fuck and told we’re useless and everything we did we might as well have not have done. In that kitchen the stoves get hot and make us feel as hot as it and thirst to stand below the fans for more than just the second we can. In that kitchen potatoes boil beside us, as we boil in suits of sweat and cause odours to bend our sense of smell away from everything that ugly, and try so hard to make a sweet smell in. In that kitchen we’ve bled from small holes whipped into our backs. In that kitchen I’ve needed more than what I’m paid to have a piss, but kept it in and added salt, pepper, butter into asparagus. In that kitchen - made of friends and sworn enemies with missing fingers - punch broke tiles and dragged knives across my arms, and took off fingerprints and left them frying with the chips, too scared to tell. In that kitchen, waited, working to smoke a cigarette and growing angrier each minute, ‘til someone lets it out of me by finding out how to make us all laugh. In that kitchen slipped on bleached floors and bits of food, and everything can be slipped on I’ve found out by now, no matter how many yellow warning signs anyone can put up. In that kitchen I hated myself and loved everyone else for letting me stay in that kitchen. In that kitchen I’ve died a few times and wanted to kill myself a whole lot more. In that kitchen I learnt how to smile, but not as much as I forgot how to.  

Dexter Selboy (c) 2013