Culinary Heartbreaks

Ingredients

Stuff
Foodstuff
Many quarts of various edible liquids
Industrial-strength coolant

Procedure

Bring stuffs floating in water to a boil.
Decant!
Cut up other stuff very carefully using a chainsaw.
Mix hot stuff with pre-mixed foodstuff to make semisolid stuff. Stir vigorously.
Introduce cut-up stuff and liquid edibles. Continue stirring.
Heat all the combined stuff over a Raging Fire. WARNING: open ALL windows, doors, turn on air conditioning to forestall asphyxiation by fumes. Tip: Give early prior notice to fire department.
Allow cooked whatsitsname to decompose to radioactive levels acceptable for human consumption.
Permit further cooling to temperature levels acceptable for human consumption.
To introduce flavor, add salt.
Serve with straight face.
Enjoy.

So I have an over-active imagination. The foregoing is the closest to a recipe that I ever obtained from Ailis. She said the actual recipe was secret, and I was not about to push to discover the details of it either, as I had low expectations from the outset. As I sat watching Al Jazeera and waiting for the special dish that she was taught to prepare by a friend, I visualized the recipe above, especially as I heard noises and saw a haze of smoke from the kitchen blurring my view.

The occasion was some sort of reunion, but we wouldn't be reunited for long. She said she would be graduating that August, after which she would go home to Malindi. To say I was taken aback is to put it mildly. August was less than a month away.

I was willing to entertain thoughts of a long-distance relationship, but she blew those clumsy ideas away so casually that my third eye was opened. I attained a new perspective of her repeated exiles over the most insignificant issues, and her real conception of just what our relationship had been – a fling, a hedonistic toast to the end of university. It had nothing to do with me.

I can say it now because it has been a while and I have lost all raw knee-jerk bitterness that accompanies such things: I had been deluding myself, or I had been suckered all along.

Yet, somehow, I still think well of her.