Neiman Marcus Cookies

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!