You held your breath at the doorway again. I felt it: the whole chest going still, the way it does when something is about to be too much for you, only this time it wasn't a threat, it was the smell of that particular pot on that particular stove. I've kept that smell for you.
Sixty years of it, filed somewhere behind the ribs, and the second it hit I dumped the whole file into your bloodstream at once. Your eyes did the thing. You called it "getting a little emotional." I called it the tear ducts finally being allowed to open after weeks of you telling me not now, not here.
Notice what the hands did without asking you. They knew where the drawer sticks. They reached for the low cabinet before the mind remembered there was a low cabinet. All that time you thought you'd forgotten this place, and I was holding the whole map in the fingers, waiting.
The jaw came down. First time all week. You didn't tell it to. Someone put a plate in front of you and the shoulders, which have been up around the ears since Tuesday, just quietly lowered themselves like they'd been given permission. The stomach unknotted. I let the guard down because I know this floor, this chair, this exact wobble in the table leg. Safe. Old word. I still have it.
I know you can't stay. I know there's a drive back and a life waiting to clench everything up again. Before you go, though: sit one more minute. Let the warm plate warm the hands that remembered everything. And drink the water she keeps pushing at you. She's right.
You always forget, and I am always thirsty.