You will keep the smell of the onions she is frying at three in the afternoon, but I will remove the afternoon, and the stove, and let the smell hang in a room you have never entered, and you will follow it like a hand on your shoulder.
I am collecting things while you sit at her table. The yellow spoon rest with the chip in it. The way the linoleum gives under the fridge, that soft sink you never noticed you were noticing. Her hands doing the potato without looking. The clock that is four minutes fast on purpose, for a reason nobody remembers, a reason I will invent for you tonight and it will be a good one.
You wanted to ask her something. I felt the question come up your throat and sit back down while she talked about the neighbor's roof. Don't worry. I have it. Around one in the morning the kitchen will be much bigger, the ceiling gone, and she will be at the counter with her back to you, and you will finally ask, and she will answer without turning around, and the answer will be true even though I am making it up, because I am making it out of you.
The kettle will become a bird. The table will float a little, the way tables should. You will be nine and also now, both, and this will not confuse you at all, because down here the two of you were never separated by any years.
By the toaster's click, by the first gray at the window, I will let go. You will keep the onions. You always keep the onions.
And you will spend the whole drive to work trying to remember what she said, and almost, almost.