My husband tried to cook steaks in our kitchen once.
He is a great cook, never trained, always trying new
things. He loves steak. He laughs at me when I order
well-done, and ready the sauce. A good steak, he says,
doesn’t need sauce. A little salt. A solid sear. Scotch.

Somehow, even all these years later, we can still smell
the mistake. It lingers in the fabric of the coats that hung
in the corner by the fridge. I’ve washed them, sprayed
them down, saturated them with florals and seasonal
abandon. But this morning, the ground frozen and
unforgiving, I pull the coat from the rack, drape
myself again in the heathered gray, reminded

of the popping grease, the smatters on the walls,
my screams against the flicker of flame flittering
from the depths of the oven. How lucky we had gotten,

how he hasn’t tried cooking steak since. How
these things stay with us, regardless.
                        

What other lovely imports,
seasonably red and unregulated
have we fancied poisonous 
enough to keep them 
from our babies?
                        

The ocean creeps closer
even as I move away.
Can I just tell you,
this is a metaphor
for her death? We tip-toed
around it long enough—
the walk from my hotel
to the surf, the way
sand burns my feet
a million times, not
at once, because sand
is so many bits of centuries
of leaving behind—
the ocean rages, loud.
What else do we name
calm that rushes at us
like a monster, 
only quiets
when she has us deep enough
to pull us under?