The Melancholy of Grinding Cinnamon

This morning Frost asked for cinnamon sugar toast but when I checked the cinnamon it was all gone.

In the pantry I have a huge glass jar of cinnamon bark which I helped prepare from the cinnamon (kayu manis - sweet wood) tree while living in Banda, Indonesia. I took down the jar and started to grind up a piece of the bark to refill the spice jar. While grinding, the aroma of cinnamon dust gave me a flashback to the patch of grass and blue tarp where we laid out the wood. To the heat and humidity of the island, of Mamamina whom I have neglected to write to (because my bahasa is so foul after a decade of misuse) and the coral sea so rich in fish and hot springs from the volcano.

From that glimpse of melancholy I drifted to missing Africa and the trees with extravagant flowers and seed pods that hang like whole chickens from the low branches. And I miss the sun and the family and rivers that flood with red topsoil into the green-greasy ocean.

My kitchen feels so isolated by comparison with other worlds where people are anchored by need in each others lives.

Wren is now unpacking the dishwasher and poking the clean knives and forks into the heating vents. I hope they are not going down.