The Love of My Life Makes Hot soup

Caitlin Thomson

There is broth in the crock pot.
Three times a day Jacob pulls a cutting
board from the drying rack. He peels and chops
a carrot, he chops zucchini, he prepares the meat.
Sometimes he adds a whole egg, sometimes two yolks.
That is breakfast, lunch, and dinner. There is variation,
the meat could be lamb, or beef, or chicken.

This is what it means to have a chronic disease right now, for him.
A loop of cooking, a loop of eating soup, with steam in his  
face in eighty-degree weather. Perhaps next year at this
time everything will be different. There could be nuts
soaking and apples in the dehydrator, or that could be just
as crazy as serving him cake for his thirty-fifth birthday.

Caitlin Thomson is the co-founder of The Poetry Marathon, an international writing event. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies and literary journals, including The Adroit Journal, Rust + Moth, Barrow Street Journal, and Killer Verse. You can learn more about her writing at www.caitlinthomson.com.