Manchurian Sauerkraut

I’m tempted to put
cardboard over my foam mattress,
make a rice pillow
and do as she did.

Buy one hundred pounds of napa cabbage,
submerge them in saltwater
and sink them with stones
for the winter.

But this is May first,
my 25th birthday,
and napa cabbage is difficult
to carry alone.

Besides, I don’t want to stink
away the neighbors
like she did
twenty years ago.

Perhaps I should sit
in a dark corner of the apartment,
away from sunlight.

The Hudson River is close by.
But she’s not here to submerge
me in water.

No delicate hands to prune
the wilted leaves.

No one to observe the conversion
of human compounds.

No one to enjoy the
fruits of one’s labor.

Twenty years ago,
I fled the house of rotting cabbage.