By Gudrun Bortman
and it makes me crazy
how he fills up the kitchen
like a squirrel stores up hard for winter.
There’s salt to last a lifetime sugar
in brown paper sacks a struggle to keep
from the ants. Heaven forbid
he should run out of granola.
I have given up weaning him
off this habit just defend
my breakfast station—
a tin of coffee beans
a flowered pitcher for cream small
pottery jar of sugar. And on the shelf above
a pint of honey a four ounce
chocolate bar a tasting jar of jam.
I have ceded the center cabinets tall
and deep clench my teeth when he enters
the kitchen door loaded down with supplies.
I kiss him and make myself scarce until
he’s stored it all away.
Gudrun Bortman grew up in Hamburg, Germany. She is an artist, garden designer and a poet. Her poems have been published in Sukoon Literary Magazine, Panoply, San Pedro River Review, Miramar and several anthologies published by Gunpowder Press. Her chapbook Fireweed was released in October 2018. Also from this poet: "A Gnat" and "Sun Gold, Black Pearl"