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Period & The Abortions

Everything was still in the kitchen, a silent stasis without form, a tension without the accompanying static electricity. The times was not yet the time; for there was a time.
   Everything was: From cumin to green cup, from bread to plughole, from the wire-wool scrubber to Weetabix, from chopping board to U-bend, from door-handle to kettle lead, spider plant to potato peeling, onion to onion, pint-pot to olive oil, fridge magnet to marmalade.
   Everything was.
   The cupboard to the left of the sink made to creek under its timberous frame, but thought better of it.
   A saucer imperceptibly hushed a serving tureen. The tureen glared back with vacuumous depth.
   This was how the kitchen waited.
   Until.

The electric kettle jumped from its bed-base slumber bee-lining for its daily tryst, opening its mouth preparing for the kiss of its beloved tap.
   The tap unwound, stretching open reeling and relieving its pent up astriction upon the kettle in the form of water.
   The water felt as though it only ever was able to pay attention to letter else but the laws of gravity. Although this was not entirely the truth. The water had such a short memory. Things would be explicit soon enough.
   No sooner had the kettle’s journey come to a circular end than one cupboard splashed open and another felt as though it had rendered open its whole soul, a sensation frightfully close to something approaching a death.
   And in turn the first spat out the green cup – which liked to call himself a cup and not a mug, although mug would have been a fairer description. The second dropped an Earl Grey tea bag into Green and couldn’t keep its grasp on the sugar bowl. It felt as though it was fading fast.
   The tea bag immediately jumped out of Green. Green was nasty, cold, empty.
   Split seconds latter a ninja tea-spoon spun-sneaked out of his barracks, stealthily made his way over to the sugar bowl and deftly delved in grappling away many of the granulated brethren, which had been housed in safety before the flash attack. The spoon jumped out and crossed the space to Green, this was his missions rendezvous point. On the trip across this vast uncharted space many – or should I be more precise here, 37 – of the miniscule sugar souls were lost in screams whilst tumbling unceremoniously to the flooring. Never to return.
   All the while, whilst this external ballet raged, this kettle screamed at the water in a baritone low and heavy steady pitch. Without ward, smell or shame the water simply obeyed and steadily excited.

All of a sudden, without warning it was that time, the time within that time. There was also a perfect time within this time. All the participants knew all too well – sometimes they found it. House & The Rooms knew it. Clock & The Minutes knew it. So did Bag & The Leaves. But the gang that know it, lived it, held it in their heart and soul sang were Onion & The Onions – although it was not there place to interfere.
   The time; it happened in such a blur and it was so perverse they could hardly believe it happened – the kettle and Green, cupboard to cupboard, spooned sugar bowl and water - but it did. And it did happen every morning.
   Kettle voted water into Green. The teabag belly flopped into the excited sputum of the water; not just in but bounced up and down, regaling in the sensation. Leaking. Sloshing. Becoming one. The kettle couldn’t watch; and it hid under the covers.
   The spoon started performing strong concise windmill kicks, throwing compact rabbit-punches and throwing tiny shurikens at his prey at such speeds and with such ferocity that there were bystanders they would be also caught in his fury.

Clink. Clink. Clink.

Then as quickly as it had come to pass the passing unravelled itself. The teabag was sucked up by the sky. The spoon vault somersaulted off to wash down after such a bloody battle. The sugar bowl returned to comfort, and of the comfort, of the second – still convalescing – cupboard.
   Most importantly the kettle remembers to deject, shun, piss-off the still excited water. Jesus, how the kettle hated it when he forgot that little, simple detox; all day and into the night the cooling, bitty, greasy sensation of the water made him feel queer and queasy for the a full twenty-four hours. And having to be quiet, not being able to say a word about it. Express his condition. It was torture. Cooling water was a heavy slime of the soul.
   The hot cleansing water was like manner from heaven for the tea-spoon who was undergoing debriefing in the steel-room.

Off in the distance there is an angry voice, still faintly audible due to its anger. No one knows where Green has gone. Everyday disappeared but would always return. His words would vary around the same theme but this time if the kitchen could listen – which it cannot, and if the mug could talk this time it would have said, “Oh Bacon. Oh Bacon. In the name of sweet Bacon. Sweet aromatic Bacon sizzling in the pan. Bacon of the fridge. Why, my Bacon, why in Kettle’s name did you kill that unborn child. Throw him away. That could have been a child by any fathering – Green, Darjeeling, English Breakfast, even Camomile. In Bacon’s name – NO! My brother! My brother!”
   And if the kettle wasn’t an inanimate piece of technology it would have thought without words, “That my boy, my dear Green, that was just a period - the time of the day. We all know that to be a truth, for it has to have a bag to make a tea.”

It did not take place and the kitchen is reset; the kitchen is at rest.

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