Pass the Wasabi

by Joan Pedzich

He served them in our kitchen, lined up on the granite island we’d chosen together, back when we could. They curled there, like day-old supermarket sushi, fleshy, raw, and briny, with a little something on the side to add heat and bite. Florets of my chilly remoteness garnished the platter, and he drizzled it all in a reduction of my too often sarcastic tongue. For good measure, my spouse flipped our sex problem off the end of a spatula. It ricocheted from the pendant lights to the tumbled marble backsplash, and landed on the butcher block, splayed as the receiving end of the missionary position, where he seasoned it with my weight gain and my annoying family. I pummeled the start buttons for the fume hood, the disposal and the dishwasher, and shouted over the sucking and slurping sounds that I preferred to pass on the next course.

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Joan Pedzich is a writer and law librarian from Rochester, NY. In golf and in writing, she is working on her short game.