FOOD

On our sixth anniversary
We packed a picnic and biked out over the hill
Found a spot in a rapeseed field
Impossibly yellow
By a rippling stream hidden from view

Unseasonably hot
We stripped to our pants
Spread my old tartan blanket
And lay
Glugging wine from a thermos
Aldi’s finest
Crisp and cold and white
And all those other clichés
Like the first wine there ever was

There was olive bread we’d baked at home
Still warm in its tin foil
A vain hope now reality
Topped with mozzarella torn with your fingers
And firm red tomatoes cut with your penknife
Cleaned on the knee of your shorts

The tiny bottle of olive oil we spied on the spice rack last minute
Saved from a shop-bought salad
The finishing touch
Making everything taste like a Mediterranean summer

There were pickled onions in tupperware that didn’t leak
Then strawberries for afters
Candied and mellow
Shipped from Spain just for us

***

I made that lunch without you today
But I’ve never really liked black olives
And I picked them out the loaf
Burning my fingers, too hot from the oven

The cheese taste of nothing
A pointless sacrifice
The tomato flaccid
Pappy and tired with shrivelled skin
Not fragrant like the last

I decanted oil into the little bottle and poured
But it didn’t taste right

Those same silver onions from the tupperware
Had lost their crunch
After weeks out the brine

No strawberries in the fridge
Thirty days till the garden fruits flower

I looked back
Drinking cheap wine alone
As the wind blew outside

Pen & pastel by Nic Danning