How to Bake Bread by Courtney LeBlanc

~ 1 packet yeast, dissolved in warm water
~ 3 cups flour, sifted until it floats down like an airy dream
~ 2 cups mother’s judgement
~ 4 eggs
~ 1 unanswered phone call, 3 ignored texts
~ a dollop of honey, not as sweet as the honey from your family farm but it will have to do
~ 1 warm afternoon, the sun illuminating the kitchen

1. Call your mother. Ask her advice for baking bread – the thing she makes well, the thing you have yet to master. Don’t leave a message when it goes to voicemail, text instead. After two hours with no response, pull out the ingredients, forge ahead.
   
2. Combine the ingredients in your fancy mixer. Let it spin the bowl till it’s mixed fully without ruining your manicure. Sit the bowl on the counter in the sun. Wait.
   
3. When the dough has doubled in size, punch it down. This is not as violent as it sounds, this is not your mother you are punching. This is not you fighting for her stingy love.
   
4. Let the dough rise again.
   
5. Shape the dough into the loaf pans. When your phone pings with your mother’s response do not pick it up, do not respond.
   
6. Peek through the oven’s window at the rising cushions of bread. Inhale the yeasty smell filling your house. Remember waking to this smell in your childhood, the taste of warm bread on Sunday mornings before church.
   
7. Tip the baked loaves out of the pans, burn your fingertips as you cut the first slice. Slather on extra butter, lift the warm dough to your mouth and chew slowly, savor the buttery puddles.
   
8. Take a picture and send it to your mother. Wait for a response that never comes.
   

Courtney LeBlanc

is the author of the full length collections Exquisite Bloody, Beating Heart (Riot in Your Throat) and Beautiful & Full of Monsters (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press). She is also the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Riot in Your Throat, an independent poetry press. She loves nail polish, tattoos, and a soy latte each morning. Read her publications on her blog: www.wordperv.com. Follow her on twitter: @wordperv, and IG: @wordperv79.