In the beginning your mother
delivered you in pain

forgettable, your first lesson.
What she will remember

is you birth-slimy,
still swimming, now

on her naked body,
your nakedness

fitting to her breast,
her milk that will come

like healing, thoughts
you can choose to entertain

going forward
in the kitchen of life

knowing someone
will always come

with a warm loaf
from the oven,

broken for you,
steam like breath rising,

the melt of butter
on your lips,

that new language,
its vocabulary of giving

and receiving, forgiving
what you know will also come.

*In recognition of Chef Kayleen Mills, her earned life skills teaching objectives offered to her students in the City Light Community Ministries’ Culinary Academy. And with gratitude for Chef Caitlin Wallace, pastry chef extraordinaire. And for Ms. Lynn Martin–Saint of the City Light Kitchen, feeder of the hungry, welcome for the stranger, hope for the despairing, a light against the darkness.