Written 5.23.23 for a prompt from Alice Sparkly Kat’s email, and subsequent Google form. While I didn’t hew closely to the prompt, I did run with the following line: notes for your 20 something year old self. Cross-posted to IG.

Inspo: egg yolk image from an old Christopher Soto poem?, Toni Morrison quote from Song of Solomon. loose vibe inspo from akaVertigo’s Dare To Bake a Peach.

---

your heart will crack open like a raw egg, all the grief slipping out of you like some long overdue afterbirth. but yolks are gold, and there is gold in this. your mother wills you this grief, but you are also your mother’s daughter and you know how to bake. her signature cake requires eight large eggs, separated, a standmixer, and twenty seven minutes total of whipping. yield: a cake that people marvel at, lighter than air, light enough to lay your head upon, gravity defying. you cannot swim against the ocean, but you can learn to breathe underwater. yield to the wisdom of your body, a vessel of pleasure, a subject of desire, a conduit of your craft. toni said if you wanna fly, you gotta let go of the shit that weighs you down, so surrender to the ocean, a portal your grief has made, let the ocean bring you to its harvest. here is a life that brings you deep feeling, brings you joy. yield, and let what is yours come to you: your unshakeable self, a force as strong as the wind, the storm, the moon, and any star.