“If you don’t learn to cook, these family recipes will die,”
my grandmother tells me, but not her grandsons.

They’re not our family’s recipes.
Just directives for women in our family,
expectations for the men.

They’re sentiments of women having to feed men,
of men having to provide women with means
to purchase cucumbers and cumin, eggs and eggplants.

Without these recipes,
I’d have no means, no ability to feed.
I must have something else to pass down.

“Let them die,” I think
but never say.