Bread

Photo by Rebecca Matthews on Unsplash

Curling up inside a loaf of bread,
fresh from the oven —
that’s what love is, he told me.
Or at least, I imagine, what he
wanted it to be.

He had been the fat kid,
he said, stabbed with words
as sharp as the pencils he gripped
to scratch the pain into
his sketchbooks.

I always hoped
he emerged from its warmth
after a long while, and discovered that love
is more than something you can hide in,
that it’s something you can chew, something
that can go down, still warm, into your belly,
and make you strong. That it’s something
you can learn to bake with flour and sweat,
and pass across the table.