Condiments on the Shelf Long After the Expiration Date

With relaxed despair, my mouth mimes words as idle fingers tuck around a coffee mug. I chew meaning and tug on rain boots to sit outside on my porch at daybreak when the moon has not yet set. In this still unrehearsed moment, birds perform a choral concert at the feeders, and I breathe. I think of the mustard that hides in aisle 3 at my local grocery store, the brown seedy kind, and country eggs from farmsteads that no longer exist, with yolks the color of this rising sun and how when you toss them in a food processor together with some vinegar and salt you get this mucilaginous substance. This creamy whitish glue paste. Mayonnaise. Where does all the color go? With yolks once yellow as my rain boots and mustard the color of seed droppings the birds have discarded during their morning chatter, how does pulverization make all the color fade? And why does divorce feel like this googum, a quasi-colloidal landscape, near colorless but not quite beige, leaving one to ponder weird words like mayonnaise at sunrise and how it clings to the tongue after nothing else remains?