Written Meals

I do not know how to bake 
something from scratch, 
like my mother’s cookies. 
With her instinctual precision 
and her habitual familial ease. 
I did not inherit this side of her.

I know how to write, how to 
whisk words out of the world, 
and measure out syllables. 
With my chaotic vernacular 
and my neurotic structures. 
I did not inherit her madness

to let it all go to waste. 
She carefully bites her meal as 
I hungrily swallow my poetry. 
We bake and write because 
we are mothers and daughters; 
we will never be satiated.