Tangerines harden on the kitchen counter. Almost great, but not quite. The apples I let brown, hoping to use them for pie. I could give up and make apple sauce, but I take delight in watching the green skins pale, bruises appear and spread. Sometimes I wait until white mold bursts from the dark ulcers. Usually I throw them away before that. Into the compost bin, where something useful will come from my waste. It takes a long time for apples to reach that point. It takes a long time till I reach that point of desperation. No one will rescue the apples. No one will rescue me from my hope, my frugality, my impatience.

Last night I cooked two kinds of squash. One butternut. One delicata. Both bought months ago and sitting alongside the apples in the fruit basket. The smaller one was too old and desiccated to be eaten. The butternut, just disappointing, as butternut always is. It should be sweeter. Firmer. It should be kabocha, but isn’t. I should be more mindful of waste, but I’m not.

Why am I the only one who cares about waste? Who eats leftovers? Who saves the last small piece of salmon or chicken or scoop of mashed potatoes for the next day, and then eats it in its compromised state, paler shadow of what had been a hot and delicious and savory meal? Why is squash my job? And apples? And things that rot?

When I was growing up, there was never food left over. We were four children, our appetites whetted by competition. And when the dinner was gone, Mom offered us bread and butter. Like offering a pillow to a drowning person. Nothing to savor, to get my teeth into. Little did I know that years later, after watching calories and carbs and gluten and fats, nothing would be more comforting.

the tastes of childhood 
comfort on tongue and teeth 
bliss in the bite  

Elaine Mintzer

is a Los Angeles poet. Her new collection, Drink from the River, will be published by Moontide Press in 2026. She has work most recently in Anacapa Review, Atticus Review, Dog Throat Journal, Gyroscope Review, and Sheila-na-gig.

Author’s website: http://www.mintzer.org

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Making the Bed by Elaine Mintzer in Silver Birch Press (All About My Mother Series, 28 November 2024)

⚡ My Mother’s Tinnitus in Gyroscope Review, Fall Crone Power Issue 2024 (page 56)

⚡ Women’s Work in Atticus Review (16 February 2023)

⚡ It Could Be Raining, prose poem by Ms. Mintzer in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 10, October 2021)

⚡ Bridge Night, 1962 in Beloit Poetry Journal (Vol. 70, No. 1, Spring 2020)