But the kitchen doesn’t know
what you don’t know.
It keeps its knives in a drawer.
No signs from the veined cabbage head
left out on the counter,
pale and dumb as the moon.
No telling which bell pepper cut apart
will bear a smaller self, stuck to the core,
hopeful, embryonic, near green.
No, no knowing in the dark
which egg
holds the furtive spot of blood.
Laura Spagnoli teaches French at Temple University.