Tender dough

Issue four: poem by Gabriella Ekman

Caught in the needling wood he was
in the oven, his head
and the whole house howling. 

It could not find him. 
Yet he’d left crumbs of cake, confused 
into a perfect circle
had left the bright white sugar windows still
burning. And around my bonethin throat, 
night wrapped tight like a kettle. 

There were two of us, you see, and two 
two was one too many of us. 

He gathered stones and left them
in the oven. I asked if he meant to bake 
apples, cake, the rheumatic cat 
who never liked him? 
He is redecorating, our mother said, sharpening knives 
with her hand on my head. Your brother 
has always had an eye for interior design. 

We were children. We held hands
leaving home. The world ended 
every day. New suns
from dough, tender
to touch we whittled
we whispered, beware
beware the knife-eyed gingerbread children 
following us home, swallowing
our crumb circles 

---

Gabriella Ekman is a writer and teacher whose work has previously appeared in Guernica, Strange Horizons, Wyldblood, and other venues. She grew up in Tanzania, Japan and the US, received a PhD in English Literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2014, and currently lives in Stockholm, Sweden, with her daughter and the ghost of a dog who likes to recite from Macbeth.