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.

my thoughts are peanut butter
sticking to the roof of my head
when i can’t find a glass of milk.

my voice is like syrup
sticking in my throat,
never pouring out of the empty cracks

anxiety’s tendrils coil around my ribs
and spur my heart to run another year’s drag race.

My thoughts, they’re
nestled between carapace and wax
in the spaces between the dancing
hymnals of a worker, telling her sisters
where the sweetest nectar can be found.

My head, it's
hollowed out; don’t you see how the larvae
fall from my ears? See how the worms
drip from my nose like snot? Can you see how
teardrops of raw honey roll down my cheeks?

The freezing lion winter slinks forward,
lays a heavy paw on my chest.
One that pushes the drones away and leaves
my skull an empty hive with scattered thoughts
slowly sponging out to fill the empty spaces.

And somewhere,
nestled between honeycomb and four wooden walls
I find myself growing into the hive;
making ready to share the honey the bees made,
wrapped in my thoughts and bone, from the nectar of
my mind.