Devour

On Tuesday nights, when my mother has strapped on dancing shoes and waltzed sweepingly onto a rough-and-tumble gymnasium floor for our favorite weekly spectacle, my father (usually) buys two fillets of summer flounder dusted in breadcrumbs and herbs, a greenly envious zucchini or two and a their savory friends, and on occasion an award-winning brownie spotted with nuts or caramel to tantalize throughout the evening. Today, however, he arrived home with nothing but a heavy bag weighted with folders and files and old newspapers with coffee stains, and quickly prepped a tray of conglomerate cheese, vegetables, and penne. It filled four medium bowls and could have overflowed into a fifth if there hadn't been a bedtime to cut it off.

As I munched my way through the chunks of cauliflower, my health teacher's blonded voice wafted back to me: "At the end of the day, just see if our power nap today helped you feel more rested or not." We were guided through a love meditation focusing on water washing away the tension in our muscles. I was unable to drift into oblivion, eyes pried open by the terror at my audition tomorrow that ventures one whole step too high. But suddenly, my eyelids began to sag like old plastic bags in the hands of an old street woman and all of the pain rushed out of me at once. And they say that my blog is food for thought. Think you've got it backwards there, pal.