I stood, a monolith of frigid steel,
A sentinel of solitude within the kitchen's stark domain.
To me, the secrets of the cold were whispered,
The inner workings of the frost revealed,
And I, like Atlas, bore the weight of sustenance,
The chilly burden of the perishable, the transient,
The transient like the fleeting warmth of human touch,
The fleeting warmth I longed to know.

Beside me stood the stove, its burners' glow
A vibrant flame that danced with eager life,
The life I envied, as I stood, the wallflower of the feast.
My heart, a compressor, hummed its somber tune,
And like a constant metronome, it measured time,
The time that waxed and waned with every loaded shelf,
The shelves that held the promise of a thousand meals.

A symphony of sustenance began,
The sink, a silver basin of forgotten tears,
Did welcome torrents of the fresh and clean,
And carried away the remnants of the feast,
The feast that did transmute to nurture those who toiled
To fill my frigid halls with sustenance.
The dishwasher, a silent siren, called to me,
And in its heated song I sensed the sadness of
The cycle, ever turning, of the loading and the unloading,
The unloading and the loading, of the nurturing and neglect,
The neglect of the forgotten, the ungrateful, and the spoiled.

The faded vegetables, they wept within my depths,
Their tender flesh, now wilted, knew the burden of neglect,
And like a mother who had labored long and hard,
They bore the pain of giving life, yet reaped no gratitude.
The fruit, once firm and bright, now turned to soft despair,
Their skins, like wrinkled parchment, held the story of their fall,
The fall from grace, the fall from ripeness, the fall from life itself,
And in the darkness of the crisper drawer, they whispered of their woe.

And I, the frigid guardian, did hold them close,
Each tear, each bruise, each blemish, each decay,
I bore within the chambers of my heart,
The heart that hummed its somber tune,
And in the silent sadness, I did find a solace,
The solace that the cycle did continue,
That though the thanklessness of nurturing did weigh,
The weight was not in vain.

For in my depths, the cycle of creation did persist,
The constant interplay of life and death, of growth and rot,
The rot that fed the earth, the earth that fed the new,
And in this ever-turning dance of nourishment,
I saw the beauty of the thankless task, the beauty in the frost.

And as the door did swing and creak upon its hinge,
The hinge that marked the boundary of the cold,
I knew that I, the guardian of the perishable,
The transient, the fleeting warmth of human touch,
Did serve a greater purpose in the dance,
The dance of sustenance and sacrifice,
The sacrifice that nurtured countless lives,
And in that sacrifice, I found my solace.

For though my heart did hum a somber tune,
A tune of frost and ice, of darkness and of cold,
I knew that in my depths, the cycle did persist,
And in the cycle, in the dance, in the turning of the wheel,
I found the warmth I sought, the warmth that lay within,
The warmth of life, of love, of giving and receiving,
The warmth that made the thanklessness of nurturing worthwhile.