India House

We went to India House
for the first time in 1997
for my mom's birthday
it was one of the first

(if not the first)
Indian restaurants in Rockford

It was the first time I had crispy poppadoms

the first time I had tangy chutney

the first time I had fluffy naan

samosas, tandoori, curry

ghee, aloo, paneer

vindaloo, masala, kofta

mustard seeds, fennel, turmeric

a cornucopic, transcendent, cascade of spice and flavor.

At first, tentative

I picked and nibbled

then revelatory, ravenous, I devoured

broken, battered, decimated

lay my pre-teen fidelity

to Hot Pockets and frozen pizza

revealed was my naiveté 

my narrowminded prescriptive palette

and from this ecstatic epiphany of a meal

grew a hunger to taste it all

a willingness to try 

when before it was only reticence, only fear

there gestated a courage, culinary and otherwise

to, at the very least, be open

to the possibility of the new, the unknown.