Are we cooking? Let’s do the bread

with pepper flakes and thyme

and light candles whose shrinkage 

tell of prior nights at a foldup table by the TV, 

off. Our shapes engorge on the curved screen. 

When will you fly to Indiana? 

You’ve printed the ticket and folded it 

many times, paper to leather, 

transfiguration of wanting—

what? Get the salt. The oven dings and, 

slaves to formality, we sit to break bread. 

Talk of mouse traps and old medicines, 

long lines and mad dashes, 

everything up to your departure 

and the question that’s singed both ends: 

will you take me, too?