NaPoWriMo 18

(Finally! I'm back on track!)



Baking a Cake


My aunt makes a well in the flour
with the measuring cup. She takes

the first of three eggs, cracks it
into the cup, then adds to the mix.

This is how you make a cake, one egg
at a time cracked carefully, separately,

as not to taint the whole or its parts.
In my 39 years, I have never cracked a bad egg,

never found blood in the yolk. But my aunt,
who seems to have been given a basket of them

goes on, without explanation or pause,
adds oil, cocoa power, mixes the ingredients

into a brown paste and shoves everything
into the hot mouth of the oven.

We let things rise the way women do
to make something near perfect,

as the egg becomes part of the whole
as the cake’s edges pull away from the pan.