OUTSIDE IT’S CHILLY, with patches of snow visible on the hills, but it’s steamy in here. The small apartment feels tropical, not only because of the humidity in the kitchen, but also because of the countless houseplants and succulents crowding the bookshelves, hanging from the ceiling, standing proud in pots in every corner. The windows are dripping. On the stove-top sit two pans, one for leaves and one for berries, from which twin streams of steam churn into the night. Their smell is obliquely sweet, musty, dirty, with hints of humus, tannin, leather, tar. Anticipation is in the air.
Annie and I are still at the start of this romance, really, just now experiencing our first cold nights together, but already I know this kitchen well. On our first date, back in the height of summer, when we’d met in a park and gone on a long hike through the madrone-thronged hills west of town, I was invited back to this house, this stove and oven, to make dinner. From that first night onward, the sensuality of Annie and her kitchen became intertwined in my mind. I watched as she dressed her cauliflower—more cumin, more olive oil, more everything—and then watched it emerge golden brown, flaky, as close to burning as a dish could be without having burned. She showed me how to cut an onion down the prime meridian, grind fennel with a mortar and pestle. She had excellent salt, for god’s sake. And she garnished our cocktails by squeezing an orange rind and lighting the little spray of its oil on fire.
The landscapes of our own bodies blossomed as we spoke aloud their names.
Annie’s presence and precision as a cook seems kindred with her work as a botanist. She is a consummate noticer of flavors and textures, of the finest filaments of things. And the same might be said, albeit in a less scientific way, of my own work as a poet and songwriter. We’re wired to see and to wonder. I remember noticing, with her, a pattern of light and shadow on the far side of the, , . When it came to botany, the best I could do was name a few plants, but Annie thrillingly knew the names for what they were doing, how they were living.
