Baking

1. Preparation

The tabletop is spotlessly white. It is time

To spread the vanilla scent, cutting tools, infusion bags

Examine the raw dough of skin coiling around his screw-like skeleton

On his battered battlefield, flaky creases flood flimsy barricades 

2. Mixing

Munching his spice-saturated curry, we joke it is secretly seasoned with ashes

From the cigarettes he puffs. Radio purring in his lap,

He trades wartime stories with the newest playground gossip, skilful hands tailoring an inch

Out of my school uniforms—I wear them like a medal-decorated soldier marching into battle

3. Fermentation

A hidden yeast, unseen—springing up like a robber, looting his ear, eye, then mind 

In the murky brine, our faces dissolve into swirling fragments of nothingness

Mom’s anxious fingers massage an orange up and down, splits it in half

He hobbles cheerfully in his hospital gown, with a toothless smile: You-my-new-doctor?

4. Preheat

I don’t remember him being this small. 

Demons swarm to devour flesh, silently glazed on the iron baking tray

Ready to operate. Father’s brimming eyes contain a fervid axe

That slashes the suffocating tubes where his words cannot

5. Let it cool

We board the same train to silence, upturned petals as our fare

In and out of slipping doors, we whisper using trembling fingers

That slowly lose their heat. At the last hour, the sun catches his breath on fire

Warriors on the walls arise: they flicker, dance, dissolve