Week 2 Theme 1

A still life of a set of objects.

The cloudy afternoon light gives the chopsticks a dusty glow, the same soft shine that gives wood carvings their wizened look. Snake heads are carved into the tips, and the light brightens their worn paint and sharpens their shadows. Tiny nicks hint at the food they had seen on their journey through thousands of meals and miles.

Those chopsticks arrived in San Francisco by plane already bearing their first scratches – from fish bones the baby learned to pick out of his fish. He missed a few, and he would remember that pain after every other memory from baby years had faded. Those chopsticks watched a five year old reaching for tofu for the first time, and they waited in the child’s unsteady hands as the white cubes fell from them into smaller and smaller bits. Those chopsticks poked at the dinner plate alone with their teenage companion, listening to his silent monologue after his first breakup. Those chopsticks persevered in the hot frying pan of a boy learning to cook. They would meet more experienced food soon.

They followed him across the country, to college, in a box. For a decade, they rested in the dry safety of darkness until they one day saw light again on the dining room mantle, safe, at last, from food. And there they stayed, those two snake heads, watching quietly as his children picked up their chopsticks for the first time.