I Want
To be in my grandmother's tiny flat, sitting on a stool watching TV, while she reduces a lump of pig's liver into thin slivers. Then she will heat the wok with oil and throw in a fistful of young ginger shavings. The hissing pungence of ginger will be how it was since I was a boy.
She will toss in the liver (the aroma and the noise), a little corn-starch and water, and a cupful of black soya sauce and sesame seed oil. She will stir-fry this until the bloody mass is dark, hard and crunchy, because I like liver thinly sliced, seared till there is no tenderness left.
She will pour all this into a bowl - not a plate; a bowl. With the sputtering juices remaining in the wok she will fry an egg and fold it, unbroken, pouch-wise. Then she will heap this onto the steaming liver and I will gobble it all up immediately, no questions asked.
I want this all: the taste, the noise, the unbidden time, when love was measured by a pound of flesh - nothing more, nothing less. This is what it means to essentially change a thing's chemical nature; how afraid I am to singe, to put myself to this simple test.