a friend gave me some words to write into a poem and i wrote this. i don’t remember what the words were and i think it loses track of itself a bit by the end but it’s still entertaining

peach frozen flecks veins spoon howl train

a good peach is soft and fuzzy like a baby’s head and the peach tree clings to its child matching the strength of stem, a tug like infant’s clenched fist on sleeve, a sleeve speckled with King Arthur flour flecks.

strong arms in rolled sleeves, forearms with good veins and good blood running through, giving red blood cells fiery fuel, sweet oxygen to knead and knead dough to be placed in the bowl inherited from mom’s grandmother.

and when i still used a men’s small t-shirt as a baggy comfy night shirt, i thought that dough was magic, rising when no one was looking.

so once when the howls of rain whipping against window covered the creaks of feet on wooden floorboards, i crept downstairs to watch.

i stood until my feet were white and the storm found a lull and my eyelids became two trains chugging unable to be slowed, chugging towards sleep.

but that dough stood frozen as peach ice cream, peach ice cream quiet and careful like how the digits from the microwave glowed green.

my dog snorted and yelped caught in some dream, the dishwasher hummed with water splashes and clinking bowls and plates, rain flowed in vertical rivers sweeping across the window and i let my legs place me on vinyl floor.

i was lofted into almost dreams carried by diffused light splayed across toes and fingers, ears and eyes. my chest and lungs reaching rising towards the dough and falling downwards.

i fell into the heart, cerebellum, or left big toe depending on your ideas about the mind and soul.

i fell and was suspended in something like dough, rising suspended between an inner monologue of images i knew and images i was being given.

i tried to understand to direct but that was like drifting and trying to catch yourself on icicle handholds or bailing a rusty canoe with a baby’s rubber spoon.

i saw myself standing in the kitchen in front of the microwave in front of the dough and i saw myself in the bowl wrapped over and around dozing against ceramic edge.

i watched until i thought i could be sure there was not anything else, not before, not after like how you can walk up the tall hill in the park and lay down and let yourself be consumed by a clear sky.

sunlight danced on my eyelids and i was seven grain bread in a toaster warming and i remembered only how the dough stood frozen like peach ice cream.