K I E R A N PAT E L
My s i s t e r g o e s d o w n t o t h e c r e e k t o cook dirt After brushing her teeth, to scrape away the slick, greasy menthol mint with little bits of filth, my sister would sneak between the cool slip of air that guarded her twenties, her thirties, and cook dirt. It was there, where the fingerless grip of a dogwood snag’s roots squeezed the sand and moss against the bank, where she squatted to stir the earth with a long-handled ladle. She hung the rest of her cookware from the epicormic shoots, and slid her gloves and grammar book in the space between the ground and an arched root recoiled back like a frightened cat. I watched her swap the ladle for a pair of delicate tongs, and pluck a caddisfly larvae, send him cascading gently through the air to a section of creek where he could architecture a home on his own. When her knees gave her trouble, she would stand, not bothering to brush away any bark shavings or crusts from where they had gathered in the folds of her jeans. She would go cleave the jewels of the forest. I know this not from seeing her do it, but later from the contents of the stew— jointed fronds of cedar, threads of mycelium, the spit of the earth, the bloom of protista, matte-red fruit of the magnolia— and I never did anything to stop her. 8
