by Jill Michelle
Level: Easy Total Time: 11 years Active: 5 Years Yield: 1 Divorce
Ingredients:
2 babies lost at 21-weeks
1 father with early-onset Alzheimer’s
1 father at 90, bedridden in living room hospital bed
1 14-year-old witnessing all of this
2 depressed spouses
23.5 daily hours of silence between them
0 meaningful topics addressed
0 snuggling
0 sex
Directions: Fuck if I know—it all just happened while we tried to take care of our dads, the 14-
year-old, stay afloat.
Test Kitchen Tip: Once started, you might not be able to quit making this.
Facts (per serving)
291g sorrow 47g loneliness 12g regret
Maiden
n. A young person of the unfair sex addicted to [clueless] conduct and views that madden to crime. […] The maiden is not altogether unpleasing to the eye, nor (without her piano and her views) insupportable to the ear, though in respect to comeliness distinctly inferior to the rainbow, and, with regard to the part of her that is audible, beaten out of the field by the canary—which, also, is more portable.
—Ambrose Bierce
my no the unfair conduct
my stop the clueless view
my no the crime
my stop the madden to
my no unpleasing to the ear
my stop insupportable without piano
my no part of me that is audible
my stop distinctly inferior
my no portable
my stop beaten out
Jill Michelle is the author of Underwater (Riot in Your Throat, 2025) and Shuffle Play (Bottlecap, 2024) and winner of the 2023 NORward Prize for Poetry. Her newest work is forthcoming in The Florida Review, Free State Review, Pangyrus Lit Mag and Rogue Agent. She teaches at Valencia College in Orlando, Florida. Find more at byjillmichelle.com.