Golden Milk by Elizabeth Triscari

Golden milk is the D&D, fantasy paperback word for a turmeric latte. I brew one for myself almost every day. I can’t use it as a replacement for pork and beans, it won’t fill me up as I wish it would. It’s a supplement for the purpose of final comfort; not the saw that cuts the wood, but the sand paper that smooths the corners, creates an altar for communion where there was once only a slab of wood on four rickety sticks.

I used to be so hungry, I used to walk on my own feet sideways so I wouldn’t step in the food remnants on my old apartment floor. My roommate’s sharp toast crumbs littered the linoleum while I ate Nutella exclusively out of the jar. That was Toronto, where my hair grew brittle and my face grew marked, where I spent all my money at Sephora and so little on groceries (“food’s actually a bad investment if you think about it; it’s so temporary”). I made friends so intimate, my cowardice is all the more pronounced that I did not keep them. I did not return home “worthy” of my family, as I had hoped to do, but rather a frail girl who waited for hours on the suicide line (they get busy on Saturday nights) and slept on the floor to punish herself.

I’m no cook, so when I pull my small iron pot into the spotlight of stove fire, the act is blatant and naked in the midst of a day’s drudgery. New neurons join hands, and the heightened consciousness I find myself party to now forces meditation. Full-fat oat milk, only a mugs worth, covered on medium-low heat. A teaspoon of my homemade mix on the bottom of the cream ceramic. It’s a fine powder of turmeric, ginger, nutmeg, cardamom, and cinnamon, to which I add a generous pouring of amber honey, encasing the dust like an old-world fly to be studied at the end of next century. Invoked now is the glass jar of virgin coconut oil I have to stand on my toes to retrieve from the cupboard with the flowery teacups, too delicate for this thick draft. I scrape some white meat off the top, then I scrape some more, until I’ve achieved the loving excess that I crave. When the oat milk inevitably foams over the mouth of the rabid pot (I lied; in truth my impatience calls for medium heat and a mess), I pour the contents into my wide mug. I stir the ochre drink until all the coconut oil has melted from the spoon’s silver, and my ingredients have made a cohesive body for my consumption. And cohesive it is, until I cease stirring and the fat rises to make a skin for its home.

The splinters of punishment are tweezed from my heart everyday, the wounds soothed by the sweet balm of loving forgiveness. I forgive myself when I’ve waited too long to do my schoolwork; instead of staying up to ruin the next day, I sleep to try tomorrow. When I eat too much, I forgive myself for not listening to my body’s limits; I sit and am still proud to have nourished myself. And this is the word of grace: nourish. I am my own nurse, I mother myself. I’m gaining weight now, my stomach has become a round signal of joy and content I’ve only seen in my oldest photos. The softness of my body now is a demanding presence; it demands love, magic, the nourishing fat atop my golden milk. It tastes of the richness to which my life has now staked its claim.