Coming Home

Tuesday 31st August

Day 132

This evening I leave my father sitting at his round table writing his story.

I think I’ m too tired to cook but later when I take the fresh plum cake out of the oven, smelling of its toasted hazelnut topping, and replace it with a tray of quartered tomatoes slippery with olive oil, fragrant with torn basil and garlic........

when I blend pinenuts with a forest of coriander and spike them with red chilli to make a luminous green pesto.......

when I pop the pink speckled borlotti beans out of their matching pods......

then I forget all the things I didn’t do today- didn’t say, didn’t write, didn’t read, didn’t clean - and I come home to myself - plant myself in my kitchen like a giant sunflower, scattering pollen. I never get lost there like I do sometimes in other places.