"Kneading" 
by Adhara Law

(c) 1998 Adhara Law. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced
without express written permission by the author.



She kneads the bread, the gum of dough peeling away from callused fingers 
reluctantly, while snow falls into the hollow pit of the town outside. The 
resounding slap of flesh against grainy flesh echoes through the kitchen, 
through the house, through her life and through his life, coming to rest 
finally against the aging paper peeling off the walls. Push and fold. Fold 
and turn. Turn the inside out, expose what was hidden to the indiscriminate 
heat of creation. 

Shaping loaves. Shaping lives.

Because she will break the heel for him, because she will serve it warm with 
dripping, melting butter as he waits at the table, because she has always 
done this, she will walk later out into that snowy pit and drive. And she 
will forget that she left the golden band on the kitchen counter, where it 
wouldn't become clogged with the mess and stickiness of raw bread. And she 
will run flour-caked hands with dough under the nails over the skin of 
someone else, kneading his flesh as he lay beneath her, folding and 
turning...folding and turning. She will hear the resounding slap of flesh 
against flesh as he pulls himself into her, taking her, as the snow falls and 
fills the hollow spaces of the town and of her. And she will cry out even as 
she tastes the raw, tender skin of his neck when she comes.

Because she will do this, she will knead.

Push and fold. Fold and turn.

Shaping loaves. Shaping lives.


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