You make cookies in the night time, as the sky goes from dark to black.

You take out your ingredients: your flour, butter, sugar, salt;
you measure them less carefully than you should
throw in an extra touch of cinnamon for flavor.

You look at the consistency, at how much (too much) butter there is,
at the way chocolate melts on your fingers,
oven heat wafting in your face.

You mix and match ingredients, crack an egg,
try not to think about how you've been here before.

Your first batch goes in, eight gloops of batter in what should hold four,
and you pace around, make yourself another cup of coffee.
Try to avoid the fact that you're only hurting yourself.

You're on batch seven, cup five, when you switch to water,
when enough batter has been made you can start to wash the dishes.
And still, here you are: late at night and washing dishes, alone.

(And the familiarity is making the hole in your chest sink down,
lower and lower -- like it wasn't low enough already.)

If there was a checklist, it would go:
  1. Have you been eating consistently?
       (No, not proper meals. But I'm trying.)
  2. Have you been sleeping well, or enough, lately?
       (No, not really. But it's inconsistent, so at least there's that.)
  3. Have you recently had a panic attack?
       (Yes. Yesterday. Twice.)
  4. Have you been feeling miserable or unspeakably sad, lately?
       (Yes. I've spent the past three days on the edge of tears, but that's fine.)

You finish the dishes, and you arrange them, neatly,
pull on the oven mitts again and take batch eight out of the oven.
Your podcast has ended so you take out your earphones, one batch left,
and the silence of the air around you is
stifling.
              suffocating.

(You did this for a year, once.
You had an abundance of baking ingredients,
                      an empty house,
                            an inability to sleep.
You asked your friends what baked goods they liked,
and then you'd give them as birthday presents.
Because you had the time.
Because you didn't have to think about buying a gift.
Because it gave you something to do with your hands.
Because seeing your friends' faces light up, even just for a moment--
                            it thawed the misery, just a bit.)

Your eyes sting, but you don't cry, as you turn the oven off,
start to stack the cooled cookies into tupperware containers.
You scrub and scrub at your cutting board turned cooling rack,
until only a hint of chocolate imprint remains,
look at the creations you've made,
and try to feel proud.