
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.
