Arabella Munro
this way please, that moody, glowing hum
the choice, salted butter, fresh bread
a cocktail, a wine, looking up to see
is it coming is that ours yet – what’s taking
so long?
the rattle of other people’s forks, ice in the
shaker,
the onion garlic butter smell of someone
else’s cooking
lemon saffron sauce swimming over my
tongue, over fish fresh from the sea,
soft slivers of meat spitting fiercely in the
middle of the table,
tender green stems barely plucked
a savoury slow dance, tomatoes and cream
and candlelight
you’ll share yours and say you missed this,
you missed me and
we’ll be delighted and the wine crisp and
complex
and it’ll feel like the first time again.
Or will it be like this: not enough flavour
here too much salt there and this one is
tepid and that one is flat and the light’s too
bright I wish we’d gone to the other place or
that one there are so many to choose from
what about the new one over near –
Arabella Munro is a broadcast journalist and international news producer by trade and a writer and poet by heart. It has taken some time to accept this. She read English at Oxford, which she loved but put a stopper on her own creativity for a while. She has been running away ever since and has spent the past five years living in Turkey and the Middle East
Twitter: @arabellamunro
Twitter: @arabellamunro