Neiman Marcus Cookies

April 25, 2025

Preheat the oven
Beat the sugar with the wet ingredients
Sift together dry ingredients
Stir everything together
Roll into balls
Bake for 8-10 minutes

I preheat
everything.
The oven ready for
the next batch
but nothing goes in.

And still
it isn’t enough.
I tried to put the
ingredients in there,
the salmon,
the avocado,
the other healthy fats.
The scheduling of sex.

As a child,
I was told,
my small waist
was a sign of fertility.

As a teen,
as a dare,
I touched the fertility statue
in the Ripley’s museum.
It didn’t work
fortunately.

Falling pregnant,
wanting it,
something in me
didn’t belong.
Like a red sock
in my lights.
Like a fork
with the spoons.

I wanted it,
but,
my sins
exposed
in my
flesh.

As a child,
I’d held up
almonds
to my eyes.
I couldn’t
see it.
I wanted
to stir,
to not have it,
so
obviously
on
my skin.

I roll out
my life to
measure it,
cut off the ends,
roll it out once more.
Soft and supple.
Less than $2.50.
Only measured by
the children I bare.
The stars left behind.
My work of art.
But
nothing,
of the
lost words,
hollowed moments.

I burn the cookies.
What a life!

Samantha WL Lee

Samantha WL Lee was shortlisted in the 2022 WestWords/Ultimo Prize for her manuscript Bound and completed the WestWords Fellowship in 2023. Samantha has been shortlisted for multiple Needle in the Hay flash fiction competitions and has been published on the SBS Voices website.

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