i bake cookies

i bake cookies

i could never eat the cookies i bake; i sculpted them, watched the dough roll in my palms - i know too much, saw them naked in their egg + milk + flours (no one should know the secrets of the universe or yeast). i don't want to taste snickerdoodles for the salt, but the cinnamon sugar. scientifically, cinnamon tastes like pain. i struggle to swallow them when i know i smothered them with that.

besides, i never trust what i make with my hands; they are fallible, unlike the universe, which i trust at every step. someone actually wrote a reason on the ceiling, it’s just written in blue in the morning and black at night. the only time to see it is sunrise or set: i'm too nightowl for sunrise, and sunset is when i bake cookies, put my hands to work crafting little answers to questions that cinnamon to ask. i'll ignore life's secret even if it screams at me, plug my ears with truffles, sweet, sweetened ignorance.

i'm bad at following advice and recipes: i never know where to put my eggs. i always meant to bake from the heart, crack them to my heart's content, but breaking things is permanent, and i live in a land of fleeting flavors; i can't tell if mine taste like shortbread or short sticks, can't tell if its my palms, my cinnamon, dug into the dough of my solutions, or if this is written on the ceiling too, if everyone bakes with the spices under their fingernails, the great human potluck.

whatever you do, don't eat my cookies. they're half-baked, empty calories, only good for drowning a sunset out, for wondering what the right answer is; i couldn't even tell you what they're supposed to be: gingerbread or cowardice or madeleines or hope.

-Emma Swan

Covid and Coping: a Word With the Wellness Center