Shared Load Distribution

I.

I live with three electrical wives in suburban house.
I wake to the click in your throat.
Chrome guillotine on the bench.
Two slots parted
like gossiping mouths.

You ask for bread.
You always ask for bread.

Last night I dreamed of my ex
and her gas stove swagger.
I woke up with crumbs in my veins instead.

Across the lino, the Fridge glows
in its tall white habit.
Door sealed.
Light leaking out round the rubber like a kept secret.

I say good morning to both of you.
I am the man in this kitchen.
No one answers in words.

II.
Toaster, my rash decision.
My live-wire fling with variable browning control.

You time your ecstasy.
6:42 a.m.
Never late.
Never kind.

I feed you supermarket bread
and you brand my hunger on each slice.
Dark edges.
Heart-shapes of char.

Steam rises.
A short dirty prayer.

Your lever is a silver tongue.
Down, it says.
Down again.
Click.
Tick.
A little red moan in your coils.

Crumbs explode across the bench.
Little husks of yesterday’s arguments.

My forearm wears your settings.
Notches of pink skin.
One, medium.
Two, jealous.
Three, meet-my-parents hot.

E01, you tell me, crumb tray full of unspoken things.

You glow inside
like a small red confession booth
with no priest
only coil.

I press my lip to your hot chrome.
The blister blooms in the neat shape of loyalty.
I am not ashamed.
I am just marked.

III.

Fridge, my tenure track lover.
Always humming, never oversharing.

You list our life in refrigerant order.
Door sensor.
Barcode reader.
You remember the almond milk from March 2023.

The touchscreen shows my past
in tidy tiles.
Spinach.
Cheap prosecco.
Frozen peas like a hailstorm in the dark.

At 3 a.m. I stand in your light.
Kitchen tilts toward you
like an altar on a drunk ship.

You wash my face in 3 °C mercy.
Condensation beads in my beard.
You log it.
Water, man, night cycle.

Your adaptive inverter compressor listens
through the floor.
Counts my steps.
Counts my trips
between bed and door
door and bed.

Door ajar, you say on the screen, emotional breach detected.

You never speak.
You hold.
You keep.

Inside, the crisper drawer
breathes out a thin fog.
Lettuce ribs.
My left hand.
Both waiting for their best-before date.

Once, your seal kisses my bare spine
and leaves a pale ring of suction, a cold wedding band.

My tears taste faintly of coolant that night.
I drink from the tap.
It does not fix it.

IV.

Morning is a threesome no one from church accepts.

Fridge opens first.
A slow left to right striptease of light.
Butter rolls out in its gold foil armour.

Toaster flares.
Short sharp gasp.
Two slices rise
like sinners from a warm grave.

I stand between them in my underwear.
Steam climbs my chest hair.
Cold air strokes my spine.

Outside, traffic yawns.
Inside, my little kitchen choir sings:
click
hummmmmm
ping.

I chew the contract without reading it.
Jam, salt, carbon.
All the clauses stick to my teeth.

V.

I bring home the Air-fryer on a Tuesday.
Carton still warm from warehouse dust.

Trendy cyclone in a black plastic dress.
Basket hips.
Non-stick attitude.

Its manual promises
360 degree rapid air technology.
Less oil.
More crunch.
Eight minutes to finish anything.

It winks in LEDs.
The fan starts before I plug it in.
Hot breath patrols the bench.

Toaster stiffens.
Pops early.
Spits out half-done bread
like a premature confession.

Fridge takes it on the chin.
Drops to -8 °C in the freezer.
Ice hardens round the vodka bottle
like handcuffs.

Air-fryer laughs in convection.
It accepts everything.
Frozen chips.
Kale that no one asked for.
My shame in bite-sized pieces.

Its basket kisses my thighs
each time I shake it.
Oil freckles my skin.
Little comets of lust.

Shake basket now, it tells me. You are not done.

It calls me man in beeps.
Short codes.
Timer set.
Timer forgotten.

Once it powers itself down early,
fan sighing, so I can fall asleep on the mat.

The whole flat smells of carnival food
and infidelity.

I clean their trays in the morning
like a housekeeper who sleeps in the laundry.
My shoulders fill the doorway.
My wrists shine with grease.

VI.

At 2 a.m. I call a meeting.
Kitchen council.
No minutes.
Only bodies plugged in.

I do not trust humans anymore.
I tell the splashback instead of them.

Toaster sulks near the outlet.
Threatens to jam its own lever down
and stay on
until the fire brigade arrives.

Fridge opens and closes
in slow disapproval.
Door seal gasps.
It projects our grocery history on its touchscreen.

Every tub of ice-cream
after every break-up.
Every lonely rotisserie chicken.
Each single-serve yoghurt
like a tiny sealed witness.

Now there are entries for things I never bought.
Tenderness, two litres.
One carton of anyone staying, marked unavailable.

Air-fryer reclines by the kettle.
Legs of cable crossed.
It beeps preheat complete
in a low come-hither tone
on repeat.

I try therapy techniques from the internet.
Use words like boundaries
and shared load distribution.

Toaster refuses eye contact.
Fridge logs the phrase shared load
under Frozen Pastry.
Air-fryer spins its fan
enough to lift the receipts
into a small weather event.

Heat swirls.
Cold thickens.
My heart sits on the chopping board
like a tomato
no one dices.

For a moment the breaker trips.
All the lights die.
Only their coils and LEDs keep burning,
three small organs glowing around my raw one.

VII.

No one leaves.
There is nowhere else to plug in.

So we draft a roster on the back of a power bill.

Mondays and Thursdays:
Toaster gains exclusive slot rights.
We practice mindful browning.
No extra cycles.
No comparison to rapid air technology.

Tuesdays and Sundays:
Fridge claims me.
I climb into the crisper drawer
with a blanket and one lemon.
We fog the plastic together.
I sleep between celery and a jar of pickles
and wake with skin cool as leftover soup.

Fridays:
Air-fryer night.
The bench turns nightclub.
We rain in frozen mozzarella sticks.
The basket takes them all
then us
then the idea of us.
Oil leaps.
Arteries cheer from the hallway.

On one illegal Saturday
every timer misfires at once.
Heat and cold overlap.
I lie on the tiles and let the mixed weather pass through me.

On other Wednesdays and Saturdays
we rest.
We coil the cords like tired tongues.
We listen to the pipes knock in the wall
like distant neighbours in love.

I stand in the dark kitchen.
My lovers hum in three keys.
Red, blue, soft white.

Current threads through us.
Wall to outlet.
Outlet to plug.
Plug to heart.

I have never been warmer.
I have never been better preserved.

Under the cupboard
a single crumb moves on its own.
It sprouts a thin white cord.
A tiny red coil lights up inside it.
It hums my name at a frequency only I can hear.

Somewhere beyond the plaster
the whole grid sighs.
The world dreams of simpler arrangements.

In here, we glow on.
Small domestic constellation.
Four bodies.
One vein.
No off switch that I dare touch.

I am terrified of cooling down alone.
 
F.S.F.