in March, i make beet hummus. i read the news, the people are dying, i chop boiled beets until my fingers turn pink. my hands crack from anti-bacterial soap. i feel feverish, frantic, the oven makes me sweat. i rinse chickpeas and think about the videos of nurses crying. there is no PPE. i am useless. i make a chickpea stew for loved ones, staring at the simmer of a dish i had made so many times in the college campus i, until very recently, had called home.
i am in the mountains now. i stand on a rock in the middle of a field and press my fingers into the moss. i pick up eggs from the people down the road, blue eggs, green eggs, duck eggs, eggs eggs. capitalism cracks open. global markets collapse. i become a brewski aficionado, dancing around the kitchen to Bad Bunny. i try not to remember the future i had lost. i make salted chocolate chip tahini cookies but forget the eggs. they come out crumbly, like sand, like sediment. schools shut down, trains shut down, offices close, stores shutter. i make granola from old oatmeal packs. i stuff any vegetable scrap i can find into a bag in my freezer, carrot peels and onion skins and spinach stems, frozen fresh. people in ICUs wither. i feel the apparatus of humanity in my heart. it feels like :: cargo trains crisscrossing deserts while the people stay home, the gilded doors of power slamming shut on capital buildings across the globe, potatoes piling up in fields of dirt while workers in slaughterhouses contract covid and die. anxiety turns my face beet red on Zoom. i am a bundle of angry, frantic energy. i make more beet hummus.
in April, i eat love. it comes in the form of pho, simmered for hours, silky noodles and dazzling broth. it comes in the form of ever present rice, warm in the rice cooker. whenever i close my eyes, i remember the 17 deceased elderly folks discovered in a shed in new jersey. ‘they were just overwhelmed by the amount of people who were expiring,’ the police chief said about the nursing home. my core hurts. how can you stop the tsunami of a virus? how can you prevent the unjust throes of death? SAVE LIVES: STAY HOME, the street signs blink. i clutch my helplessness by the throat. i make matzah with my cousin, puzzling over our first passover meal without the culinary lead of our elders. we make brisket, carefully following a family recipe, pouring campbell’s cream of mushroom soup into a ketchup-y, goopy mix. one night and several hours in the oven later, that meat comes apart like corn silk. we show our family over Zoom, holding up our plates to the camera. as i watch my grandparents’ white heads bob up and down on my computer screen, i wonder if i will ever see them again. i eat clementines. i eat gumbo and chicken marbella, recipes sent by loving moms. in the morning, i gather last night’s almost empty beer bottles for beer bread, the last beer bread i ever made. goodbye, college. i finish my thesis and miraculously, make dumplings with an angel, wasted and unafraid. i begin to organize lists for our grocery runs to Tops, sections for dairy, for meat, for produce, for grains. i miss my ex-lover. Zoom breaks my heart. i make lemon teacake and feel soft. i watch the death toll skyrocket. i watch time dissipate. Ahmaud Arbery’s murder floods social media two months late. Travis and Gregory McMichael killed him in broad daylight. they acted out of self-defense, the prosecutor said. bullshit. they acted out of the unjust permissions of whiteness in America. they acted, by design of white supremacy, exactly as they should.
i spend my time feeling so much that i feel nothing. i am perversely comforted by the anxiety of my friends. now, they see what i see in every dead leaf, drugstore brand Tylenol, trailer truck, parking lot, skyscraper, supermarket tomato, dripping gas nozzle. doom. destruction. i see it everywhere, and now they see it too. so, the angel and i make peking duck. i slip my fingers between flesh and skin, pushing gently towards the severed neck. it feels cold. i feel lost.
in May, i sigh back into peanut butter, slathering bananas and apples with gobs of Jiffy from the red plastic jar. i listen to myself as i watch my thighs spread on the toilet seat, you are so fat you pig you must stop eating so much or you will get so fat and no one will like you. i make raw broccoli salad with garlic and sesame. i buy plant babies from the nursery, energized with the flush of nurturing life in the world. basil and sage and rosemary and mint and cilantro and swiss chard and dinosaur kale. i am not ready to move on from college. i graduate and cry all day. i hope to say goodbye to Zoom forever. boy, am i fooled. i braid challah strands for shabbat, brushing them gently with egg before sliding them into the oven. i rip apart pieces of challah and dream about queer futurity, about the spaces where we build the worlds we want to live in. uhrooj rahman and colinford king mattis are arrested for burning an empty cop car in brooklyn while state-sanctioned murderers are celebrated as heroes. my dreams turn to the urgency of a place where people come before property, where abolition marks just the beginning of the flourishing of care. i yearn and i am afraid. i anger and i sadden. so i make chicken marbella. i wake up and make hummus and bagels and pizza for my whole family, staying in the kitchen all day. it feels better to be alone, alone with my onions, alone with my flour and my canned tomatoes and my salt.
in June, we plant the garden. not-so-neat rows of tomatoes, of basil, of beets, of yellow squash, of peas and zucchini and cucumber and onion and lettuce. i revel in the smell of dirt. i feel the swell of love for my family, the roaring rush of gratitude for my grandparents. i pray they will make it out alive. i make Samin Nosrat’s kimchi pancake with my cousin’s homemade kimchi. i feel myself pulled back into love, craving my ex-lover’s grainy face on my iphone screen, remembering what it’s like to not feel so numb. i stir curry powder into one of the cans of tuna in the pantry. the country erupts in protest. buildings burn. i fight with my family about private property and racism, ‘riots’ and whiteness. i feverishly post about abolition on instagram, hating my white guilt, torn between being there to care for my grandparents and wanting to be home in the streets. feeling the rush of what the world could be when you fight for it. i cry over the little green buds of my first tomatoes, so small, so green.
in July, i cradle a candle at a vigil to honor black women who were murdered by police, feeling the hush of hundreds of candles burning. i hold my bike in front of cars as protestors take to the streets. i feel the collective swell of togetherness. in our anger, we are alive. i go home drenched in sweat, buzzing with adrenaline. i drink a beer on my stoop.
in August, i pack us sandwiches for the rockaways, smoked trout on oatnut bread with pea shoots, red cabbage, and beet hummus. we wash them down with corona seltzers covered in sand and it feels, blissfully, like real life. i eat an entire pie of homemade pizza on my couch to the tune of grey’s anatomy. i miss my lover even though it feels good to be alone. i spread earth balance and the sweet vermont jelly my lover had gifted me on oatnut bread, cherishing my new favorite dessert. i try to conceptualize pleasure. i am at war with my body. i am at war with becoming a being. my restlessness feels like a rapidly melting icicle. like a rat darting around on the subway tracks. like the searing pain of a fresh burn. i return to my grandparents in the mountains. i gather arm loads of yellow squash, hidden beneath large leaves in the dirt. i make Yakitori-style zucchini and salmon skewers on the grill with my grandpa, pinching myself to never forget what that feels like. i spend afternoons wandering slowly through the woods, foraging for chanterelles and porcinis. i become obsessed, enthralled by the way mushrooms eat up the rot. i wish that the world would be covered with a giant mushroom and we could all go from dead and dying to fertile, fresh ground. i drive to the local dairy bar, where i devour my favorite food in the whole world, Cry Ass Fries. french fries, chipotle sauce, canned jalapeño, bacon bits. i try to grow up. i discover, unsurprisingly, that growing up is hard to do. i spend afternoons in the garden with my grandma, weeding around the lettuce and sage and peas. please grandma, i ask her. do you have any advice? for living? she says, you should read dickens. she says, you don’t need my advice. she says, you’re doing just fine.
in September, i pack tubs of quinoa and lentils into the cooler for a drive. through new jersey, through delaware, through maryland and virginia. i eat packets of trader joe’s nuts and watch the moon rise over a foggy lake from the passenger seat. i empty packets of beans onto small pans on the camp stove and watch the stars. i feel alive and horrified. i feel my core unfurling to the light of dolly’s clear blue morning, sipping cool blue gatorade in the driver’s seat. through tennessee, through oklahoma, through texas. i feel so good and so far away, from my body, from my friends. i wish i could make a run for it from my mind. i try to build another home and so i boil yellow beets in Santa Fe. i miss my lover but they are right here. i wake up in the morning to their wide, anxious eyes. i ask god to help me soothe them, to help me heal them, to make it easier to exist in the world. i eat sweet potatoes, cooked soft in coconut oil, and feel the resentment rise. i braid challah and ignore my insides crumbling from self-doubt. i stir dried apricot into pearl couscous and try to pretend it isn’t time to let go. i dip apples in honey for rosh hashanah and feel the weight of all my layers of need and desire and want. i eat a vegan tamale to break my yom kippur fast and face the heart-wrenching thing of a light that fades. Donald Trump gets covid and doesn’t die. i wander outside after dinner, caught in the spotlight of the full desert moon. i pray. i peel back the skin of roasted green chiles on top of a cliff in New Mexico, hoping for help, slipping into a gorge of what i have to shed.
in October, we drive through Louisville. i eat a fried chicken sandwich alone, watching the kids at the table next to me pick at their french fries. i listen to an organizer risk their life at injustice square park, the site of breonna taylor’s memorial, while people patrol the perimeter with AK-47s and police line up across the street. a site of honor and strength and an unyielding flame. i listen to them speak and something blooms in me, something opens. is it that i believe, in a world full of cruelty and chaos, there could be something more? something better? something that heals?
i devour fried green tomatoes somewhere between west virginia and DC as my lover and i drive through hurricane Delta. the windshield wipers work overtime. we fight about therapy. i cling to them for comfort, knowing full well that i am about to fling myself into the abyss of the rest of my life. i go home. i make bread, chopping kalamata olives into small bits and plopping the sticky dough into a yellow tagine. the virus rages on. i gently lift my scoby, a gift, into its new clean jar. i burn the flavoring, chucks of mango and ginger sinking to the bottom of the saucepan as the water evaporates. i seal my new kombucha baby with hair ties and cross my fingers for the best. as they say, the book of love is long. and boring. my heartbreak widens more and more each day. i sauté fresh shiitakes and onion in coconut oil, losing my appetite. i wonder how i ever got the energy to cook. i revel in the feeling of not being hungry. i watch my thighs shrink and my will to leave my bed shrivel. i apply for jobs. i force a chipper voice on networking calls. i drink mint tea.
in November, i place a sunday morning bagel order for seven jews, quite possibly one of the most challenging things i’ve done in my life. i pick at my tofu cream cheese and watch my grandma dance, her arms swinging around her torso to the beat of Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande’s ‘Rain on Me.’ depression grips me tighter than ever before. i lie awake, and i rouse myself from sleep. i stand outside the brooklyn public library handing out Working Families Party lit on election day, smiling placidly under my mask as a green party man yells at me to get some morals. i take to walking around my neighborhood at dusk, peering into living rooms and kitchens and bedrooms and trying to remind myself what it is to live a life. lots of light fixtures is my best guess. i build a fire with friends in a state park, frying tofu and lamb chops and trying my best to seem okay. we shiver and warm our derriéres over the fire, drinking artisanal hard seltzer i scooped from the food co-op (passionfruit elderflower and clementine hibiscus flavors.) i wish i didn’t have to drive away. i get into a car accident and hit rock bottom on the 158th street highway ramp. my best friend holds my hand as i sob in the driver’s seat. i arrive home and position myself in fetal position on the living room floor. my mothers guide me to the couch. i skip dinner and start zoloft. i take the train to westchester to eat turkey sandwiches on the beach with people whom i love. i say goodbye to a best friend before she moves thousands of miles away, swallowing tears and tasting turkey. i make mushroom potpie with my mom for thanksgiving, soothed by the sizzle of the gravy when it comes out of the oven. i go to the mountains and pick up the best cookies ever from the post office. i wait for the zoloft to kick in. i make beans.
in December, i eat my first impossible whopper in a parking lot in Fredericksburg, Virginia. i feel my agony begin to melt. by the time i have my first bean crunch wrap supreme a couple hours later (fresco style), i am swimming in a puddle of my own exhilaration. i eat sweet potato chickpea coconut turmeric stew in a new home in a new place and fall in love with three new people. they tickle my heart and hug my brain and make me excited to stroll into the kitchen for coffee every morning. we eat hot dogs in the ikea parking lot, giggling at ourselves. we slather babaganoush and hummus on bread before work. i spend hours making a lentil chili, feeling my love language flow over as i ladle the chili into bowls. we sit at the kitchen table, our arms getting sore from pressing potatoes to the side of a box grater, preparing mounds of potato flesh to be fried. we spread coconut yogurt and apple sauce on latkes, letting the hannukah candles burn down. on christmas eve in Atlanta, we dig into daddy d’z fried green tomatoes, fried okra, pulled pork sandwiches, and hush puppies. after a brief power outage on christmas day, we side step around the kitchen making vegan shepherd’s pie, vegan mac and cheese, vegan creamed spinach, and roasted brussel sprouts. it is chaos but i don’t mind. we dip summer roll wraps into warm water, gently rolling them up around freshly sliced carrots, cucumbers, and vermicelli noodles. i feel pure happiness for the first time in so long.
on monday, i start to feel sick and worry it is covid. i make soup with vegetable bouillon, watching an egg turn milky white in the broth. on tuesday, my dads call, they have been exposed to someone with covid. i sprinkle nutritional yeast on avocado toast with sesame oil. on wednesday, my mom gets covid. she is okay. my aunt has it too. i pour pumpkin puree into a chickpea stew. a couple days later, my grandparents get covid. i cry on the phone with my ex lover, crumpled under a streetlamp in an Atlanta park. i go to a bar and drink mezcal. this year, i tell myself, is butthole. i go home and open a Grubhub tab to order green curry. i close the tab and head towards the kitchen to cook ande ki kari. i abandon the recipe and throw in more and more pinches of cumin seeds, of garam masala, a dash of apple cider vinegar, garlic and herb mix. i nestle hard boiled eggs into the thick tomato sauce, flicking my fingertip across the firm yolks to test their warmth. i eat at the dining room table. the spice burns my lips. the sensation is neither good nor bad. it’s just a year, i tell myself. it’s just time. i head back to the kitchen to serve myself some more.