He opens Honey Fungus a month later. When he kisses you at
the end of service, leaning like an oak bent in a gale, you wrap
around him and lace your fingers up his spine.
A year later, he’s planning your nuptial feast. Fecundly
humus cep pate slabs. Venus clam broth; a mermaid caress
down the throat.
And you grow together. And you forage. And years go by.
Every Wednesday he reserves you a table. In his kitchen
he warms a courgette flower between his palms like a child’s
chafed hand. He lays each dish before you. Pasta blisters
popping flavours that sing too loudly on your palate. Toothless
nettle butter and Signal crayfish consommé the colour of
Calpol.
Your belly yawns for something untamed and you slink to
your forage sites chawing watermint and samphire.
He rewrites the menu each month. “It’s about marriage of
ingredients. Often, these things grow side by side.”
“Symbiosis,” you say. “They feed off each other.”
He smiles blandly and you go and stare at your age spots in
the bathroom mirror. On the wall is a framed newspaper cutting
Photography
Jonas Nilsson
Lee