oovoposting

Get your ingredients and lay them out

Organize them on the table, just so you know

You know everything is where it should be

Begin to knead the dough.

Feel it stretch beneath your fingers.

Webs of flour form and are crushed beneath each handprint as you work.

Fold the cracks deeper and deeper

Hide them in the sable dough and they will sit, full of air, until the oven cracks them open and spills out their contents

Hide the cracks, this is normal

Crush 200mg into a fine powder.

Mix the dry with the dry, the wet with the wet.

This is what your mother taught you.  Hands gripping the whisk over your much smaller one

Inquisitive, you asked, why make them separate?

So they don’t fall apart, she responds

You’ll ask this question again and again, why?

You’ll learn now, mother will always respond, until she doesn’t

Mix the dry with the dry and keep your grip tight

Mother isn’t here to hold the whisk for you anymore

Let it sit.  Talk to it.  Be concerned, but keep cool.  Blow on it as needed.

It’s its first time being left out to sit too

Don’t think about all the things it isn’t yet

When you sit in a flimsy plastic chair, still wearing your apron, don’t let your hands shake

Be happy, be glad the doctors care about you at all

Shaky as hell, hold that pen like your chopping kinife

And cut, cut, cut down into the clipboard because it’s one step closer to the sweet truth you need

450 degrees and god, you’re burning up

The receptionist goes to get you a damp cloth

Blow on it some more.

Decorate as needed.

Press pills into its giving, brown crust until it lets you in

Rip the dough, distend it around the filling

Sprinkle with 15 mg of superficial shavings from the bottom of the bottle

Add bright colors, your favorite

It doesn’t matter how you do it, just do it

Everyone else put sprinkles on theirs

Remind them how you used to be

The taste test, just for the master chef.

God, you’ve been waiting years for this

A watched pot never boils, so you’ve waited patiently

Living just around the corner from the kitchen

But patience is thin these days and you can’t wait anymore.

The letter from the doctors finally comes.

Stop shaking your hands, you’ll drop the food.

Open the paper now, read those magic words

Those precious little A’s— 

Anxiety

Asymptomatic at time of visit

Ask for follow-up

That will need to go in the oven, too

You take a small bite, all you can bear to give yourself

Acidic, on the back of your throat

God, you ruined it again.  Too long in the oven.

Try again next year.

But they’re waiting at the table.

Guests all brought something of their own

And you don’t know what they expect from you

But there’s no time to fix you now, dinner’s ready

Like it or not, this recipe is all you have

This recipe that’s lead you down the darkest of rabbit holes, that’s taken you to corners of the internet you never knew,  that’s locked away the sun, that’s turned every bit of sweet into sour, the recipe that made you a chef but never taught you how to cook.

Follow me, it says, and it almost sounds like your mother.  You’ll learn now.