When porridge cooks, she said, it smells of the field of the first bird in the first field that smelled the first blade of oat rising from the soil of the field recently upturned to the air by the curved steel armature of the plough and i want to smell that though i can’t eat but can i smell that? and so we wrapped her in the red pyjama worn pale from washing and it flapped gently against her legs and the jacket against her chest with its breastbone risen like a bird and we lifted her wrapped up into the chair and wheeled her into the kitchen expectant and weary and lifted her wrappings and her in the wrappings out of the chair and the chair was empty and she leaned or we leaned her to smell the steam of the pot and inhale it into her as if she were about to set sail in the wind of the scent of the first blade of oat of the first spring as it rose out of the soil of the first field.
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