After a two-week quarantine, my daughter sends a text
asking me to make soup, like when she was little.
And though it won’t cure the virus that has kept
her away from us, I want to believe that it will
calm her fears like the times I read, “Goodnight,
Moon,” even when I couldn’t keep my eyes open.
So I rush off to the store to buy the yams, chicken,
pumpkin, corn, chayote, garlic, onions, and carrots
to make soup the way my mother, born in Struie,
a few miles west of where Sam Sharpe dreamt
our freedom showed me; then, I add turnips, the way,
my friend, Jeffrey, did, but not before he scooped
the schmutz off the top, like his mother and a line
of mothers who never survived the Holocaust,
taught her. And after the broth simmers to a golden
blend, we thank the hands with which we have been blessed
