Jericho in the Kitchen

Grace Margaret McDaniel

In my kitchen, the tiles are colder

than they should be

as if the floor has been waiting for me.

I drift toward the knife drawer,

my fingers wrapping around the handle

before I tell them to.

The metal smells like fruit and grief

sweet apples, ripe pears,

and onions sharp enough to sting memory.

I kneel by the bottom drawer,

where potatoes, beets, and onions sleep

like small, root-bound animals.

Something stirs.

A witch’s breath escapes

sour, warted, ancient

curling toward my face

as if to greet an old friend.

I choose an onion

with half its skin missing,

as though it has already begun

to shed itself for me.

Peeling it feels wrong

not like removing layers,

but like unwrapping a beating thought,

a trembling insecurity,

a confession I didn’t mean to hear.

The blade meets flesh

and the rings fall in soft spirals.

Do onions age like trees?

Are these rings years,

tiny ghosts of what they were?

Some glow bright,

some bruise under the light,

some quiver like they remember something

and wish they didn’t.

I hold the rings in my palm

they shift,

rearrange,

stack themselves into a tower

too delicate to exist.

It leans toward me

like it wants to whisper

but doesn’t know how.

I set them back

onto the chopping block,

dicing them into pieces

rings to squares,

years disrupted,

identity scattered.

Skin abandoned,

rings forgotten,

life reduced

to a sting that clings to the air.

My eyes fog into an onion haze,

clouds forming behind my lashes,

watering the floor below.

The fumes fill my vision

until tomorrow disappears

replaced by walls rising around me,

walls I name Jericho

because they feel biblical,

doom-heavy,

alive.

I try to look over them,

but the walls stretch upward

like something breathing.

My legs fold,

dropping me back to the cold tile

that hums beneath me

almost purring.

The walls tilt inward,

monstrous in their silence.

In the strange town of my Jericho

there is only the knife,

the trembling onion scraps,

and my hands

that don’t feel like mine.

As I chop the pieces smaller,

the walls begin to shake

trembling,

shuddering,

mirroring the onion’s collapse.

My Jericho falls,

crumbled by a blade

and a vegetable older than it looks.

Zgs

Biography: I am an inspiring artist of many medias. I am originally from Hawaii and raised on a small dairy goat farm on the mountain of Haleakala. I find enjoyment in capturing the moments of life to keep documented for my future years to come.

Artist Statement: A lonesome brick structure stands between trees younger than the stones it is built from. Maybe a hole made to show another world. What have these stones seen? What do they know?

Grace Margaret McDaniel

Biography: I am a second-year student at Oregon State University majoring in elementary education and minoring in theater. In the future, I hope to return to school for a master’s degree so I can work with special education students. Poetry has always been a way for me to relax my mind and see the world more artistically, but my love for writing has only deepened since starting college. It gives me space to reflect, imagine, and express myself with honesty. I’m grateful to have a supportive boyfriend and family who continually encourage me to keep writing and growing creatively.

Artist Statement: This poem began with the simple act of cutting an onion, but it quickly turned into a vision of how fragile our inner worlds can be. I was thinking about how everyday tasks can trigger unexpected emotions—memories, fears, or a sense of unraveling we didn’t plan for. The kitchen became a place where the ordinary felt haunted, and the onion’s layers mirrored the parts of ourselves we peel back without meaning to. The vision of Jericho rising and falling came from that sense of internal collapse. In the poem, the small, mundane moment becomes a quiet reckoning with identity, vulnerability, and what crumbles when we’re not looking.