There is a fire here that no one feeds. I looked for the wood and there was none, only a black box that grows hot on its face when the old woman turns a little wheel, and no smoke, and no ash to sweep, and no boy sent shivering to the pile at dawn.
A witch would burn for less. But she is no witch. She is a grandmother, and her hands are the hands of every grandmother God ever made: cracked at the knuckle, quick with a knife, never once still.
The wonder is not the cold fire. The wonder is the plenty. Loaves already made, sitting in a bin as though bread were a small thing. A cold white cupboard that hums and keeps milk sweet in the warm months, when by rights it should have soured and been wept over.
Fruits in the dead of what feels like winter. She does not ration. She does not count. She presses food upon me though I did nothing to earn a crust of it, saying eat, eat, as if famine were a story told to frighten children.
I have seen the hungry year. I have seen a mother portion out one egg among four and go without herself and call it enough. This old woman has known that too. It is written on her. And here at the end of her toil the Lord has granted her a warm room that fills itself, and she spends its bounty giving it away by the fistful to whoever walks through her door.
I misjudged her plenty for idleness. It is not.
It is a woman who was hungry once, making certain no one leaves her hungry again.