Loaf of Bread

Maybe I should stop kneading bread

I cannot eat,

pressing my hands into the dough

folding into its weight it can’t hold.

some loaves burn on the edges,

the crumbs stick to my hand,

baking,

a science I simply just don’t understand.

I wait for it to rise,

patiently watching,

but it never stays.

some loaves burn completely,

blackened bitterness

surround the crisp middle,

the edges stick to the pan forever.

Others collapse under their own weight,

soft centers folding in.

one loaf lays on counters

that will never hold them.

Untouched but not worth trying to bake,

it has sat too long,

and the outer layer has stiffened.

I watch them dry into crusts,

edges cracking,

The same pattern.

I mix, I fold, I knead, I wait,

again and again,

if only my patience alone could make the sweetness stay.

some rise uneven,

shaped by heat it chased,

one I warned and kept out of the oven,

just for it to come back and take.

take all the sugar, the yeast, the care,

the whole loaf,

with nothing but stickiness on my palms,

even though it was there to share.

I think of the time I wasted,

the warmth I pressed into air,

Days stretch like dough,

soft, pliable, easy to make,

turns to

burnt edges, hollow middles, sugar spilled

where sweetness should have stayed.

Maybe some bread is meant to fail.

but it’s hard to keep baking

when each one just bails.

The burnt, collapsed, abandoned loaves

they are theirs, not mine.

I will no longer scrape the scraps from the pan,

but simply wait for the dough to be kind.

I let the dough take a shape of its own,

I will tend only to the loaves

that want to rise from my baking,

not the ones

that slip through my hands

to someone else’s oven,

hungry for warmth they never earned,

for sugar that isn’t theirs.

I watched the first golden crust form

under my care,

the sweet steaming lingering through the kitchen air,

and I know some bread is not mine to eat,

that some sweetness is meant for others ovens,

but it didn’t have to leave so discrete.

The burnt bread is theirs,

but am I the only one who misses

the warmth that never stayed,

the crumbs that clung to my hands?

I fold my hands around the dough

that remains,

pressing gently

without the strains.

I was taught how to bake

with care sometimes people like to take.

But baking is trial and error,

and perfection does not describe a loaf of bread

nor perpetual.