Food and Beverage: “The Fridge” by Mordecai Martin
The Fridge
The fridge is full! For weeks we approached it with trepidation and dread, we saw nothing in the fridge but empty guts and glass shelves with strange obscurances staining them which on inspection were rotted herbs and interstitial fluid from raw chicken. Now the fridge is full! It’s full! We go to the fridge and we are confronted with possibility, with plenty. Opening the fridge and seeing an orange that could be crisp and refreshing. Opening the fridge and being surrounded by the bountiful death, chicken legs and turkey bacon and hams and a whole red snapper. Opening the fridge and confronting the fact that we’ve never had pâté of our very own, but here it is. Opening the fridge and feeling the pebbled surface of the grapes, and daring to individuate one, and then crunch it, POW, into sweet juice. Then again with the olives, this time the singled out stone is washed with brine and curing adds the sting of salt. The fridge is full! What if we ate these cocktail onions? What if we carmelized this yellow onion? Or that garlic? What if we ate our way through the fridge but took breaks to buy groceries and the fridge was always full? What if we never stopped eating, and buying groceries, and shitting out of necessity, and eating some more, and buying more groceries, always returning to our cornucopious fridge? What if the fridge is where we’re meant to be? What if the fridge is the hearth inverted, the homestead represented, not by flickering warmth, but by frigid eternity? What if we moved into the fridge, wrapped in our wintry best? We could live next to the relatively balmy vegetable crisper, awash in the cool green purple shade of the red leaf lettuce. We could look up to the curdling milk and imagine shapes in it as with a cloud. We could bathe in pickle brine and marry a nice Jewish pack of Hebrew national hot dogs, really settle in. We could curl around the mayonnaise jar like a contented cat and nap in the long cold dark. Maybe we are already there, maybe all of us are already in the fridge, perfectly chilled and waiting to be taken out.
About Mordecai Martin
Mordecai Martin is a bisexual psychiatric survivor, a fifth generation New Yorker, an aspiring translator of Yiddish poetry and prose, and a writer. He lives with his wife, child, and Pharaoh-Let-My-People-Go the cat in Washington Heights. His work can be found at MordecaiMartin.net and he is on social media @mordecaipmartin.