It felt like the bok choy was staring up at her with a smirk, making fun of her. While wandering the farmer’s market that morning, she just had to have it. The beautiful bok choy. 

Her friends nodded knowingly as she reached for the prized, quasi-exotic vegetable. 

“This one looks fresh,” she smiled.

No, she did not know if this bok choy was more or less fresh than any of the other bok choys sitting next to it. She didn’t even know if “bok choy” was single or plural. 

In her vegetable-induced fervor, she invited her friends to join her that evening for a fresh meal, which she would effortlessly prepare using her farmer’s market finds. She had just moved here. The times had been lonely, and quiet. And these were new friends, likable people, people with connections to other people, humans who allowed her to spend time with them and also, suddenly, feel like a human again, too. 

So here she stood, glaring down at the bok choy. In its coy silence, it threatened to blow her cover—her new role being a savvy cook and buoyant conversational partner. The stalks conspired against her happiness. 

She picked up the butcher knife she had selected out of her knife block, which was buried beneath two weeks’ worth of to-go boxes and take out cutlery (for one). She held the knife above the cutting board and slowly positioned it at varying angles over the bok choy, coaxing it to reveal its true nature to her. Did all of it want to be chopped up and eaten? Were there any parts of it that shouldn’t to be chopped up, or couldn’t be eaten? Would it prefer to be washed softly, or massaged with gusto? She said a little prayer to the vegetable.

“Please tell me how to make you edible, even if it’s not in your best interest.”

After a beat waiting for an answer, she set the knife down and took a lap. She walked around her quite new, quite small apartment, gently touching the blank space on the walls. This unfolding chapter of her life felt fresh, but she worried it would continue to feel quite small, or even shrink into nothingness, if she didn’t try hard enough. The bok choy became a conduit for her potential—a path leading to her new, better self. She returned to the kitchen counter. She paced in front of it, one hand covering her mouth.

Finally, she stopped.

“That’s it.”

She planned to prepare this vegetable the same way she was planning to move through the world—with ostensible ease. She picked up the knife again, promptly setting it back down.

“A glass of white wine!” she announced to no one.

She filled her glass high enough to necessitate slurping off the top before picking it up. She hoisted the glass of wine in one hand and used the other to clasp the knife, grinning with cavalier delight. In mere hours her apartment would be full of voices that would shatter the tomblike silence it had endured for half a month. 

“And those voices,” she said between gulps, playfully stabbing at the bulbous base of the bok choy, “will be singing the praises of my tremendous ability to cook local produce.”

She set down her glass and held the knife steadily with both hands, like a samurai preparing a deathblow. With a triumphant cry, she swiftly chopped the entire head of leaves in two. This cabbage would not be her undoing.