Burnt Sauce and Dusk

The kitchen air thick with onions,

sticky tomato sauce clings

at the pot’s edge,

blackened where it slipped past care.

That burnt edge smells like

forgotten things,

tongue remembers the taste—

sharp bitterness hiding behind sweetness.

Mom swears she won’t let it burn again,

but the smell lingers,

thick as the dusk

curling in the corners of the room.

We eat with quiet mouths,

and the burnt sauce tastes like

all the times things went wrong,

all the times we swallowed anyway.