Times I have made roses out of aluminum foil
and the chocolate chip cookies we had to
bake with our hands.

1. Anything can have petals
and anything can be a rose if you
press it with enough silence
in your thumbs-- and it was
cold and it was soft like 
all the aluminum foil we swallowed and
spit into mason
jars over the summer

2. The kitchen counter was an altar

3. We laid on cutting boards
to steal as many paper towels 
with our blood as we could

4. Were you a rose or a strawberry
because there's not much a difference
in the color of blood?

5. The kitchen counter is an altar

6. The kitchen counter is an altar 
where we could make metal breathe thorns
or was it bared wire? Or was there 
a difference? 
And did you remember to bake the cookies?

7. We roasted green potatoes instead inside each
metal rose petal--
and the thorns bled us like 
pork chops in the crock pot-- still
simmering days later on the
kitchen counter that is an altar.

8. Aluminum foil wallets hold 
enough space for three quarters and 
a half of a train ticket-- 
one half from me and one from you-- so 
at least one of us will remember
where we had gone as a whole

9. Use the last of the foil
to make a flower-- not just a flower--
a rose so we remember that the coldness
has layers-- that we can't all
be dandy lions or daffodils
but that most of us will
dye like strawberries on the 
cutting board

10. Do not be afraid of the oven.

11. The oven is not an altar

12. The oven was not an altar

13. We knew the foil was for cookies
not roses but it was worth the burns--
these roses won't bleed but they
might leave scars--

2. Our hands were an altar

3. Our hands are an altar

1. Our bare hands were enough to bake
the chocolate chip cookies without sheets or
foil-- 

My brother and I learned that
the kitchen counter is an altar.
I was ten and he was seven 
on our own that summer when we
spent days like snapped wish bones
and ate everything as if it were
a ceremony-- the cult of crock pot
pork chop potato roll fingers
still sticky from baking chocolate
chip cookies without rose petals.