By Aimee Nezhukumatathil Flour on the floor makes my sandals slip and I tumble into your arms.

Too hot to bake this morning but blueberries begged me to fold them

into moist muffins. Sticks of rhubarb plotted a whole pie. The windows

are blown open and a thickfruit tang sneaks through the wire screen

and into the home of the scowly lady who lives next door. Yesterday, a man

in the city was rescued from his apartment which was filled with a thousand rats.

Something about being angry because his pet python refused to eat. He let the bloom

of fur rise, rise over the little gnarly blue rug, over the coffee table, the kitchen countertops

and pip through each cabinet, snip at the stumpy bags of sugar,

the cylinders of salt. Our kitchen is a riot of pots, wooden spoons, melted butter.

So be it. Maybe all this baking will quiet the angry voices next door, if only

for a brief whiff. I want our summers

to always be like this — a kitchen wrecked with love, a table overflowing with baked goods warming the already warm air. After all the pots

A love poem, to all of the beautiful and wondrous things of the world.

Sometimes you have to take your own hand as though you were a lost child and bring yourself stumbling home over twisted ice.

Whiteness drifts over your house. A page of warm light falls steady from the open door.