Inga’s Parallel Universe Summer Soup

Why was it electric yellow? It wasn’t that there wasn’t
lemon in it – oh, there was: and egg yolk beaten
to a froth – and honey ladled in to render sour citrus soft:
she’d iced it all to cold bold gold. Inga worked hard:
prized her summer soup. But this one threw her for a loop.
Blinding as the sun, it seemed to want to float aloft. And my! –
it was a chilling sight! Something she had done to it –

that grind of Swedish cardamom? – had undermined
a law of physics – leeched a cosmic secret out: her soup
emitted light. Its brightness flowed in bloops and bloats
and glows out from the bowl, slowly rising, separating
into clouds which coalesced somewhere above
the ozone layer of the sky to cause abrupt eruption
of a spry new universe. All Inga knew is that her soup

had disappeared. Well, that – and that her cat would
soon appear to lick whatever had been left: “Here, Marabelle!”
The kitty came, and tongued the faint remains of baby
Universe – the kind the theoretically inclined call Parallel.
Marabelle has turned a little strange. She flickers
in and out of range: she’ll disappear and reappear
and purr. Some say she belongs to Schrödinger.


 
 
 
 
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