Kombucha

by Alexandra Reiss

Yesterday,

I would not have stepped into this teashop.  The smell—

was it your hair? Currents and cloves, it still lingers

just above my lip; insistent.

Today, it is your hands that charm me,

darting and diving through candy colored bottles. This you do for me:

spilling saffron in the spice isle. You scoop it up

sift it through your fingers.  Really,

it is the enthusiasm with which you explain:

It is fermented yeast,

it grows from a culture.

The taste comes from the mature Kombucha colony,

Do you like it?

I like the idea of it. The idea of… Truthfully,

it is hard for me to swallow. Bitter and startling as baker’s coco.

It too inhabits you, remaining on the tongue,

in the mind, for days.