When I Was Young and In My Prime by Alayna Munce

his house (veterinarian appointment Tues 1 pm, that cat will be the death of me) , and because of the shaky hand he writes them in.  
    Because his house is for sale and I’m guessing this was the last time we’ll ever make sauerkraut together. Because his old cat Tigger died the day before I went over there to make the sauerkraut. Because Tigger is buried with an upside-down washbasin to mark his grave under the apple tree that Grandpa tried to splice with pear.  
    Because the man poured pickle juice on his fried rice when we ordered Chinese after making the sauerkraut. Because I tried it too. And it was good.  
    Because the first year I made sauerkraut with him I told everyone, Did you know there’s no vinegar in sauerkraut—only cabbage and salt, fermented. Because no one knew. It was always news.  
    Because we have the same taste for vinegar. Because I don’t speak Low German or German or Ukrainian or Russian or Dutch.  
    Because the lantern that used to light his way to the barn for morning chores now hangs unlit in my living room.  
    Because he bought thirty cabbages and bragged to the Mennonite woman who sold them that his granddaughter wanted to learn sauerkraut.  
    Because she was impressed.  
    Because he wouldn’t tell me when I’d stomped enough juices out of the cabbage with the wooden cudgel. I had to guess for myself. Because he used to have Polish farmhands who made huge wooden kegs of sauerkraut. Because they’d walk on it in their bare feet. Like Mediterraneans walk on grapes. For wine.
    And I’m crying now because I’m such a sad sorry sap and I’m about to get my period and I’m behind on my rent and I’m back in the pantry kneeling in front of the sauerkraut scooping the scum into a blue plastic cup holding my breath in the stink and my nose is running and I’m wiping it on my sleeve and trying not to sob too loudly as the plumbers gather up their tools below.  

things buried with us

    1  
    The clicking sound  
    her knees made  
    whenever she bent  
    or straightened.  

    2  
    One Saturday afternoon  
    in front of the general store  
    a starling swooped close,  
    and she was not startled.

    3  
    When pregnant with her first child, she had  
    a womb-name for it which she never told anyone  
    (though once quite near her  
    time she wrote it down in pencil  
    on the back of a recipe card  
    as she waited  
    for her pie to set).

    4  
    He bought an old violin once because he had  
    a certain idea of himself. It buckles
    slowly, stringless
    in its black-lacquered case in my closet.

    5  
    Long ago a secret formed  
    a lump in his throat that gradually  
    became part of his profile. She also  

    had a secret—who knows  
    if it was the same as his or  
    different or somehow  
    both. Whatever the case, over the years  
    it was incorporated into how she held her face  
    so when you see her in her coffin you will barely  
    recognize her—forehead, cheeks and jaw  
    unclenched; face slack, loose, almost  
    universal; the secret  
    gone before her into the earth.  

    6  
    There was a certain teacup, a tallish lily of the valley cup, its silhouette like a fleshy neck smoothed out by the chin held high.  

    It was the one she was drinking from when the hospital phoned with the news of her father’s death.  

    She placed the cup at the back of the buffet, behind the gravy boat, Christmas platter and crystal pickle tray.  

    Years later, when the house was sold, the contents auctioned off, the buffet and china cabinet cleared out, the auctioneer’s assistant picked up the cup,
    wondered ever-so-briefly why  
    it was separate,  
    then put it together
    with the rest.  

    7  
    Almost everything
    is buried with us:
    once she ate a shallow bowl full of wild  
    strawberries that took her the better part