Prep starts before heat. The board is cold. The pan is still clean and dry.

The hands have opinions before I give them any.

Right hand goes for the sharp knife. Left hand takes the dull one. Nobody decides this. It just happens. The sharp knife dices tomatoes clean. The dull one wrestles stems and crushes thyme instead of cutting it. A different smell comes up when you crush.

Right hand moves toward the stove. Left stays at the counter. Hot and cold. The kitchen splits down the middle.

Knife on board over here. Oil starting to shimmer over there. Two rhythms that don’t match.

Garlic doesn’t wait for coordination. It hits the oil and the smell arrives before the mind does. Left hand is still chopping parsley. Right hand is already stirring cream. The spoon scrapes the pan, wood on metal, a sound that means dinner is happening whether I’m ready or not.

The first small mistake is physical.

The oil spits. A burn blooms on my left thumb. Small and shiny. Attention went to the wrong place for half a second. The stove doesn’t care about the counter’s problems.

Right hand reaches for salt. Left grabs pepper. No one’s watching. That changes nothing.

Both hands go for the lemon at the same time. One hand yields. Not discussed. Just a retreat, like letting someone take a parking spot.

There’s a hierarchy I didn’t know about. Right hand assumes it’s in charge. Left hand doesn’t argue.

Then left hand does something cleanly. An onion slice so thin it surprises me. It keeps going. Thin, then thinner. A habit. A need. The dull knife shouldn’t be able to do it. It does anyway, because the other hand is busy.

Two components develop side by side with no plan to merge. Sauce thickening in the pan. Something sharp and pickled getting chopped on the board. Capers. Maybe anchovy. Preserved things making their case.

The sauce finishes first. Right hand waits. Left hand keeps moving. Quiet watching. The waiting hand feels strange, like it’s been fired.

Rice steams in one pot. Cold greens get dressed in a bowl. One bowl sits and cools while the other still hisses. Two tracks. No plan to bring them together until the last minute.

The food shows up anyway.

When it’s done, it looks like it always meant to exist. Like there was a recipe. There wasn’t.

After, I try to write down what happened. Ingredients are easy. Timing isn’t. The “while” doesn’t translate to paper. The order was in the body and left when the cooking stopped.

The burn on my thumb stays. It’s the only record that the kitchen was split in two for a while.

The board is warm now where the pan sat. The knives go in the sink. The dull one looks guilty. The sharp one looks tired.