I gave you my heart;
small, smooth, elastic -
colour of a hen's egg,
nested in fingers.
Keep it warm, I cautioned,
add something to feed it,
guard it, safe-keep it
and it will grow.

You took it with a smirk,
cut off sizable chunk,
lumped that into bowl,
stored remainder away,
added two cups of flour,
wet and dry ingredients,
stirred with sticky fingers,
then turned out to knead.

You punched it flat,
took it up in bleached hands,
squeezed, twisted, contorted,
folded back, remoulded,
finally formed a foetal ball.

Then you attacked that,
pummelling, trammelling,
punishing, hitting, beating
over and over again,
till you were completely
satisfied-sated.

You placed cowed dough
in well-greased bowl,
covered with black-cloth,
waited till swollen,
then drew it gleeful-out,
whacked and thumped
to make it shrink back,
made use of rolling pin,
scrolled, dropped into tin,
left, expecting it
to rise.

Oh but you forgot
to protect,
to close back door
and the smell of raw leavening,
drew in winged hoards
and by the time
you returned,
your poor, hard work
was rank with flies.

So you picked up cloth,
fleece-threw it to trap flies,
picked up the bowl,
took it swiftly outside
and buried it deep, deep, deep
without
a single regret
for there was still half left
to experiment with
and when that
was used up,
there would still be a quarter
and so on and so on
and so on
and so forth........................