I love like a baker.
My dear, 
eat the first muffin
before it cools.
The first one is always for
you.

The semi-sweet chocolate melted
on my knuckles remind me that I love like a baker.
And I'm sorry.
I love you like a baker.
I'm tied up in apron stirs and 
I use wooden spoons to write love letters.

My dear, I save the pens for cook book edits
and poetry--

I've never needed a formula for what we make--
We always have more
strawberries than the 
recipe calls for--

but who in this world can survive 
on only a cup of strawberries--
 
Sometimes the only way I know how
to kiss you is in macaroons
and the sweet circus tents of mint meringues.
There's butter on my sweater sleeves
and my wrists always smell like stirring. 
Stirring egg whites to a foam--
stirring midnight folded into you like the dry mix
of flour, baking power, and salt--
stirring without a the wooden spoon--

Mashed in fingers-- my love
is doughy like muffin mix
and pours thin some mornings like
cupcakes-- rests easy in the 
familiar spoonful of chocolate chip cookies--
presses lightly in your mouth
like raspberry thumbprints--
And who doesn't want chocolate chip cookies?

I know it's not easy to love a baker
and sometimes I bake too many gingerbread men
to fit in the oven-- Eat dough
like my obsession with apology--
I save the burnt-rim cookies for myself
because my love is only allowed to be 
golden like pancake faces and creme brulee--
I don't want you to know that even bakers
burn the edges sometimes-- 

But you say that everyone is golden 
and everyone is burnt sometimes.

You say you love a baker so you're
used to the butter stains on our sleeves
and recipe cards on the night stand.
You're used to preheating ovens and the timers
always set on my cell phone--
you don't flinch at alarms because
you know it only means that muffins are ready--
you let me hold the tooth picks
and keep bowls of lemon zest in the sock drawer.

I know you're not always hungry for banana bread
I know sometimes the lemon bars
taste faintly of melancholy
I know sometimes I can be a whisk
and sometimes I see skin too much 
like parchment paper--

hold on to me like oven mitts