#SOL16: Knife

form my art journal (Gesso, acrylic paint, pan pastel, stabilo pencil)

I.

The knife is dull.

Too dull to slice through the lemon peel. Lemon in water, my start to the day and this morning it was more like sawing than slicing. I never learned how to sharpen a knife. That was always relegated to Rob--something he did religiously.  For nearly thirty years each time he used a knife, he would first sharpen it. Love lets us remain complacent, uninitiated. I never learned, regardless of the times he attempted to show me.

You want to put an edge on the knife. Watch. Like this.

And then he would draw the knife down, applying steady pressure against the sharpening stone, holding the knife almost perpendicular to the stone.

Always away from your body. Yeah? Okay you try.

I'd give it a go and quickly slide the knife back into the block, pleased to be done with it. Who knew I would need to know this and know this so early?

Four seasons have come and gone and the knives are now dull.


II.

Grief is insidious. It stalks, not like a wild beast trampling through brush announcing itself, but rather it slithers unnoticed until it's too late to safeguard a heart.

This morning, the house was filled with the laughter of Devon and his friends who were sitting at the kitchen table while I was standing at the cutting board ready to quarter that yellow fruit. And quicker than it takes to read this sentence the memory of Rob's death punctured me; the room tinged with such yellow sadness.

It is these small matters, things hardly worth the notice, that cut--not too deeply, but enough to slice open.