Unwrapped

The place where grandma hides her shotgun shells.
—Definition of kitchen in The Urban Dictionary

I spend a lot of time in the kitchen because I like to cook. In the initial months and now years of the pandemic, I have spent even more time in the kitchen. Luckily, I enjoy the creativity of it. Some days I noodle along, chopping, scrubbing, peeling, stirring. Some days I am hijacked by sudden beauty and put down the spoon. I see something in a new way and in the most unlikely of things—a dish-washing glove, a scrap of compost. When this happens, I stop everything.

(The shotgun shells remain hidden. Grandma is not telling.)