Pressure Cooker

My mother's pressure cooker was the stuff of nightmares, one of her many seemingly medieval implements of torture (or cooking or haircare or yogurt-making for that matter). I don't know where or when she got it. I do know that it was red once, but that was long before its form was burned into the deep recesses where my childhood fears live still. Her admonitions never to touch it, never to pick up the ...???... "thingy" while it was on the pot left no room for doubt. If I disobeyed, I would blow our house to confetti (aside: that would have been a highlight of an otherwise cheer-challenged childhood). And had there been doubt, the shh, shh, shh, shh that accompanied the thingy's menacing swing would serve as further warning.

Shh, shh, shh, shh is the sound also of my longing escaping when I can no longer contain it in this body. When my knuckles are sore and my eyes are bleary from the effort of punching down my desire for Eva, sometimes I just have to say something. Today I asked D if he wonders what it would have been like. What a bore I am! What a tedious refrain that one is! He says, "it would be harder." Yes, it would be physically and financially harder, but emotionally... you'd never hear me shh, shh, shh, shh again. And maybe my red paint would stop peeling off.