She retires to her kitchen
for the comfort and the warmth
it is her den, her study and her workplace
she reads, she listens and she cooks the family meals
but
there are also ghosts in this kitchen
spirits who visit and sleep between the pages of her books on her desk
there is Emma Bovary who lingers when she cuts the onions
and permeates her space with the cloying odour –
the inevitability of domesticity
the stinging tears that longs from escape
from provincial life,
the ever ever encroaching bourgeois-dom
Also Anna Karenina who infuses the air of romance
and whips up dreams of the realms of passion
as airy as any pavlova
she has no panache for this desert
nor the spirit to macerate the forbidden fruit.
Sylvia Plath stays to stir the creative juices
and stews the existentialist doubts
the restless search –
her genius for self annihilation
a feast yet to be served in this kitchen.