Bread Muse

Strange things happening as this summer begins to saunter more sedately down serious paths and treads with a step slightly wiser than may or june.
Beautiful...the way a moon in august is more like a pearl earring softly resting against the hollow of a smooth neck. Less sensual like the rotund bead of sweat moon from early july, not searing and dangerous like the red moons of october.
Running.
Running becoming part of me.
I like it. I like how strong it makes me feel, how capable. I like that I feel my body working for me, with me, and under me. My command and it falls like tree limbs, or roots i suppose, maybe not a tree at all but the wind in the tree. Nonsense. It's okay though. It's late, and my dreams are not a place I wish to return tonight.
The bakery.
I prop the door open during my late night shift. After Sara, the other night girl leaves, it's just me, the oven and the radio.
At ten, I take a breather. The last of the sour doughs is loaded. I have ten minutes before I should really finish mixing my starters and begin cleaning the place. The rocky soundtrack comes on the radio, and I take a hot, soft olive roll from the cooling rack, tear it into steaming halves and dip one in the reserved oil from this afternoon's garlic roasting pot. Sara left half a blood red tomato on the counter and I smash it between the hunks of warm bread, a clumsy pinch of salt, and I eat my dinner leaning against the open door watching clouds dart across the moon. My nails thick with paste, skin heavy under a mantle of sweat and oil and flour, clothes dusted white, legs aching, and this moment of solitude is perfect.
The first timer on the bread goes off.
I take a deep breath.
Jam the rest of the sandwich in my mouth, and on the way back to the oven I hear eye of the tiger begin. This is when my job feels like a fucking event. I jump up, grab the huge peel from the top of the oven, and crank open the top deck. The blast of heat whacks me in the face with the dry, slightly sour smell of the bread. Yeah bitches, it's plebian, it's a dirty job, it's hard and it makes me as energetic as a bowl of oatmeal when I get home, but at the end of the night, when I push the cooling racks out into the hallway and lock the door, I saw the genesis of something all the way through, and I can go home and sleep and battle the fucking mental chess pieces with a giant wooden peel.