Winter Kitchen
Veronica Tucker
Bread rises under a striped towel,
quiet as a cat asleep.
The kettle hums against the burner,
windows gathering frost at the corners.
Flour lingers on the table’s edge,
a white dusting of possibility.
In this room, hunger is not sharp,
but round, generous,
spilling over in laughter,
in butter melting too quickly,
in the way warmth clings
to the walls long after
the oven door closes.
Veronica Tucker
Veronica Tucker is an emergency medicine and addiction medicine physician, poet, and lifelong New Englander. Her work explores the intersections of medicine, motherhood, memory, and what it means to be human. She has work appearing in One Art, Eunoia Review, and The Berlin Literary Review, with additional works forthcoming. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband, three children, and two dogs. When not writing or working in the hospital, she can be found running, traveling, or savoring a finely crafted matcha latte.