Friday Morning

Adelaide moves deftly between the tall cupboards, plucking out the few ingredients she can not afford from her housemates' shelves. Although noone is home, she is nervous that someone will take a half day or lunch break and catch her knicking dashes of cayenne and squirts of pesto from their stash. She moves in time to the whorish pop guiltily leaking from the small radio on the counter, humming, singing loudly. Every so often she stops, unwraps a bloc of dark chocolate with almonds, pops it in her mouth, and chews it slowly. Then she spits it into a paper towel, folds it in fourths, and meticulously tosses it in the tall trash can before sweeping to the next cupboard. A large pot of stubbornly bland beans simmers on the oven, light floods the texas tiled counters, and the floor is splattered in odd corners. Adelaide is happy, and she acknowledges it, dismisses it, has another piece of chocolate. If she were dead, as she been pretending for nearly a month, this moment would not be, but could she honestly acknowledge this as the meaning of life, to the detriment of all those well-wrought books and men's heavy ruminations? Surely not even the tall ceilings of the kitchen could not contain such destruction.