HER BREAD BAKES WELL

In a kitchen soaked with August, she folds
and folds the flesh of flour salt yeast and water.
Her brow knits softly, as if there’s a secret to baking
baguettes in humidity, that only she knows. I remember her

white dress in Lake Pontchartrain’s
Fourth of July breeze, and how her lips moved
with the words she always recites to herself, fragments
of Sinatra lyrics, a love by the wind-crossed sea. Even here,

outside her window, I want to know the syntax of her
body and I am overwhelmed. I do not hear the slamming
of the oven door, or our bourbon spilling into the cracked
tiles of the floor, but watch as she says my name, Billy—
says Billy—and her own hand, covered in the sticky wet
dough, steadily kneads the column of her throat.

LEDA’S GRACE AT DAWN
April, West Texas

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Victoria Marie Bee is an artist, letterpress printer, poet, and translator.
A MFA candidate in Fine Art Photography at Texas Tech University, she currently lives in Lubbock, Texas.