Not With The Compass, Not With The Map by Beth Curtiss

Not With The Compass, Not With The Map

after Karen Volkman

By Beth Curtiss

Often from baking-scented winds I’ll remember
the taste of chocolate chewy caramels wrapped in squares
of your scissor-cut wax paper, edges twisted some chilly gray morning when only
you and your cocoa-colored cat were up.
He’d watch you hide them in paper-lined blue-green-red tin boxes to chill overnight.
We’d open our door to you in unexpected Marches and Junes and Octobers
and after coat-taking, couch-sitting, Corgi-greeting, we’d explode with cold chocolate,
tooth-sticking, tongue-flipping, eyes-fluttered-closed.

You and years gone, the new moon
will peek from between the stars into the kitchen:
hours of baker’s chocolate, sugar, butter,
stirred with our burnt wood spoons, with your bent candy thermometer
until the moonlight in the Rocky Mountains learns the taste from the wind.

Beth Curtiss is a senior music major and education/creative writing double minor at Bryn Mawr College. After she graduates she hopes to pursue a master’s degree in music education and become a secondary school music teacher. Her primary instrument is voice and she usually writes poetry and fiction, but she also enjoys dabbling in piano and creative nonfiction. She primarily grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, and has been both a writer and a singer for as long as she can remember. Aside from writing and music, her interests include spending time with her family and pets, travel, reading, learning about world religions, technology education, and knitting.


	Not With The Compass, Not With The Map after Karen Volkman By Beth Curtiss Often from baking-scented winds I’ll remember the taste of chocolate chewy caramels wrapped in squares of your scissor-cut wax paper, edges twisted some chilly gray morning when only you and your cocoa-colored cat were up. He’d watch you hide them in paper-lined blue-green-red tin boxes to chill overnight. We’d open our door to you in unexpected Marches and Junes and Octobers and after coat-taking, couch-sitting, Corgi-greeting, we’d explode with cold chocolate, tooth-sticking, tongue-flipping, eyes-fluttered-closed. You and years gone, the new moon will peek from between the stars into the kitchen: hours of baker’s chocolate, sugar, butter, stirred with our burnt wood spoons, with your bent candy thermometer until the moonlight in the Rocky Mountains learns the taste from the wind. Beth Curtiss is a senior music major and education/creative writing double minor at Bryn Mawr College. After she graduates she hopes to pursue a master’s degree in music education and become a secondary school music teacher. Her primary instrument is voice and she usually writes poetry and fiction, but she also enjoys dabbling in piano and creative nonfiction. She primarily grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, and has been both a writer and a singer for as long as she can remember. Aside from writing and music, her interests include spending time with her family and pets, travel, reading, learning about world religions, technology education, and knitting.