pot with lid as lid of pot

My Gourmet recipe for a “Cowboy Supper” calls for sage & a big hunk of meat. A rapid boil works its way back to mellow, while the dime Western I compose in my head as a side-dish is punchy as a long toke. What’s bubbling spurs me to make this a high-plains love story. It could be kick-ass dish.

But boilerplate plot isn’t recipe enough—I want something outlaw that’ll crack my safe. It should be hot, & brand me like rough sex. The meat of the story’s my read on whether there’s good in a man who’s a little dangerous. Could he have my heart on a platter, or eat me up like horehound candy?

Pot, you’re a watched man. I get a whiff of your heady & weedy. My slow simmer starts reading like a tall tale. I stew, scrying the kettle for a sign I might be just the sweetheart for your rodeo, though I’m already hitched to the plow of all settled down. This don’t keep me from stirring things up—

a cowgirl Witch of Endor. I light a fire under the All-Clad kettle of delicious where was but a hill of beans. I’m trailing a vision into the sunset—the last roundup of what I’ve failed to corral. I bawl like a pale-faced calf cut out from the herd. (Don’t fence me in?) I could chuck everything else but

my claim on this unholy stew. It’s too lonesome on this prairie! This grub packs the lost high I can’t get down from. I’m keeping a lid on it and him. Here’s looking at ya’, bust bronco. Too old for horse opera, I give up these unhappy trails. I hang my head, and inhale the tear-jerker smell.