In Your Winter Kitchen

To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die.

~Thomas Campbell

Because of you,

and the recipe you once wrote for me

in your elegant hand,

I bought bittersweet chocolate in the store today,

hazelnut spread, and heavy cream.

In the afternoon we will bake mousse cake, warm

your house against the blowing cold and early-dark

of winter. Light from your kitchen windows will spill out

on bony trees, on tight-furled leaves

of rhododendron, and you will ask me who

I am, and I will think of

yet more things I didn’t know to ask you

when I could have,

and I will believe we can inhale the memories

drifting in the chocolate air.

~Jennifer L. Freed