By Bonné de Blas

the baking of bread. The breaking of bread.
The braid of the bread. The countertop wiped
bare, the counter ready to receive, ready to rise.
Your hands knead and roll, need to roll the
yeast and flour. A wish of water. A yes to the
morning with its coffee cups and litter boxes,
the slow sun bleaching the window. Water and
yeast and flour. The vase on the table empty of
flowers, the balcony a burst of geraniums, a
burst of lavender, a burst of begonias, of bars
of black wrought iron bracing back the oaks
and magnolia. Your hands braid the strands,
lift them into the mitered metal pans, tuck in
the corners. Oven red and warm, ready with
tiered racks, the cats on the kitchen rug, paws
tucked under their dozing bodies missing not a
movement. Yellow rises into brown, butter
glazing coils of crust seasoned with sesame.
Best not to ask the oven to open, its light
enough to see. The smell of heat, the smell of
warm dough, the smell of bread carries into the
bedroom, into the bathroom where I shower,
teeth brushed and rinsed but not flossed.
Dinner is too many hours away from the time I
take the towel from off its rack. Three stars in
the sky will call down the night, will call us to
table, will call us to prayer. Will call us to
candle flame and your hushed voice. The
sweetness of butter and honey in a land of milk
and honey where I promise and you promise
and we break the braid of bread.

Poet and book artist Bonné de Blas is working toward her MFA in poetry at Kent State University in collaboration with the NEOMFA program where she teaches writing composition and creative writing. She received an MA in English with a concentration in Creative Writing from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and a JD from Case Western Reserve University School of Law. She is the author of two chapbooks The Act of Dwelling (NightBallet Press) and The Rule of Contraction (Kattywompus Press), and her poems and essays appear in the anthologies What I Knew Before I Knew (Pudding House Press), Lipsmack! (NightBallet Press), and Older Queer Voices: The Intimacy of Survival, Lambert and Einstein, eds. (olderqueervoices.com) for which she was nominated for Best of the Net 2017. Her artists’ books are in the Special Collections of the Cleveland Public Library, and in galleries in France, Mexico, and New Zealand, as well as in many private collections worldwide. She lives with her spouse and two cats in Chattanooga, Tennessee.