I pull open the top
of my head like
a refrigerator door and
scoop lumps of my cookie dough
dreams out.

Fold in bittersweet love,
chocolate chips and a
pinch of the
things I don’t know how to say.

Make them
my friends’ favorite shapes,
with cookie cutter words
and bake them by the
dozen

When the rain clouds just
won’t go away on a
dark stormy day, I’ll be there
to bake you cookies
your own special way

Blackened, raw, ruined cookies. Never
what my recipe envisioned,
never a good use of the things
in my fridge. Things I can’t
just buy again at a store

So my hands scrape against
bone as I go further in;
pull more of the dreams
out for them, for you
to chase the storms away,
to make light that I hope will stay.

The bakery room
tile is cold, my fingers blistered.
Not a single cookie has been delivered.
My clothes, my floors, my walls...
Stained with burnt cookie hopes,
and raw cookie dreams

My fingernails bleed as I
scrabble at the floor,
claw at my hollowed out skull.
I’m desperate for
one more chocolate chip
one more kind word
just one little batch of cookie dough.

But I know there’s nothing,
only the sound of scraping nails
and the echo, echo, echo
inside my head.