Controlled Rot

The lid popped loose sometime in the night.

I found it at 6am,

lights still off, the smell already

in the room before I was.

Faint. Sour. Not bad exactly.

More like something deciding.

The recipe came on a torn envelope

tucked inside a secondhand book.

Someone else's handwriting.

I don't know their name, what they were keeping.

Garlic honey, three days in.

Small bubbles at the surface, amber,

the cloth still rubber-banded at the mouth.

I stood there in the dark

and breathed it in.

I've been checking it every morning

the way you check a thing

you started and aren't sure about.

The jar just sitting on the counter,

doing what I asked it to do.