The roof of my mouth has been scalded. I was eating thick soup and its bounteousness reached the ceiling. Burned. The tongue runs over a rough spot. Cools.
I don’t like soup.
The cold is nasty. I am sitting up in bed, my plastered foot stretched out. When I get up, I wear a shower cap over it. It looks like a funny head and I imagine a face in it, my face, drawn, pale, the stray white strands fly…I imagine myself walking near the sea, old but sparkling with silvery hair and getting home to a bath with that same shower cap, a salmon pink. I don’t recall when I got it, where I got it from. It is more comfortable that tying a plastic bag. I even tried a piece of cloth and knotted it with a bow. Oh, my, how posh it looked for a while until it came off. The floor is not geared for bow-tie events.
But this is about soup. I think soups do have merits. I usually like them clear, clear enough for me to be able to see the bottom of the bowl. Thick soups are meal replacements. I don't like replacing things with things.
There were noodles swimming in like little earth worms that come out during monsoons. It seemed like a veritable underwater adventure – bits of carrot like fish, peas like bulbous plants. I add a couple of cloves.
It feels good as I spoon it and it slips in gently. Until that one moment when it hit the top and scalded the delicate mouth roof. I finished off the rest with some trepidation, pushing it right in close to the throat. The taste buds were denied any pleasure, but with a blocked nose they too had shut shop.
I smell eau de cologne and Vicks. I look at my feet; now that the swelling has gone there is space. The plaster is loose. I can poke my finger in and I do. The foot wants to dance, it wants to enjoy the rains, it wants to walk straight, it wants to tiptoe…ah, but that is all it does…it wants to be raised high. It wants soup. If I pour it, it will be ruined. Don’t get it wet, the doc has said.
My foot does not cry.
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