The lines between what we write.

A boule, a choosing, a trust.

The marble is cold and crowded from piles of clean dishes wanting to be returned to their chosen spaces on reclaimed wooden shelves and inside of cabinets needing a fresh coat of black paint. The stone is wiped clean, left to dry while the flour, levain, water and salt are weighed and mixed. Once dry, the flour sprinkled onto clean marble and the dough scraped from its old brown vintage mixing bowl.

I knead the warm dough to try to find my words, the ones I will speak to you today. I am trying to break from old ways like a cicada emerging from its crispy shell. You are not blameless and I am not blameless and those two truths are the only map now. In truth, I am afraid that it is too late, that there is no way through any more. And that doesn’t sound like me, the one who believes in her own spells of beauty and devotion.

The dough moves like soft clay, responding to my pushing wrist and pulling hands by becoming the version of itself that feels like memory and is always a surprise. That is what you feel like to me. That is what I should say.

A sourdough starter is patience and timing and trust. It is one part this and one part that, repeated until it knows what to do-knows how to bubble in a ferment-does so quickly and without care. The worry that comes with beginning a starter, this sense of not getting it, this worry eases over time and the starter and the levains and the doughs become an extension of your hands’ movements; they begin to live and breathe in the ceramic bowls.

My mother gave me her vintage sourdough crock that she hadn’t used since we moved from North Carolina to Germany in 1984 (I was ten). Forty years of the absence of wild yeasts brewing inside of it. Forty years where I was kneaded into this shape, the shape I no longer recognize.

I made a levain with my baby starter in the crock and there was palpable magic in my kitchen, the kitchen that you and I turned into our own magic. Sanding cabinets, moving cabinets, taking off doors (I know this was hard for you) and years later, the marble I had dreamed of, the marble you wanted to give me because it was a dream. This crock held memory of the wild yeasts and my doughs were transformed in color, smell, taste. They lightened and brightened and shit, shit shit-THIS IS WHAT I WANT US TO DO.

To take the shapes we were formed into before there was an us and find a magical vessel that will transform us into a partnership with ease, joy, play, desire, longing, cherished moments and the practice of being in conflict that moves us towards each other, not away.

Stretch and fold the dough three times. An hour later it is ready to rest in the brown bowl to rise with heat and time. There is no timer to set for this, it is the practice of the making of levain bread that tells you when it is ready.

Once on Thanksgiving a dearest friend called me. She was in heated tension with her partner and they were pushing the other away and I remember thinking that their passion for each other was so intense but it worked the other way too, it could bring fire and discontent and the chaos of drama. She didn’t feel seen and when that happened the ground underneath had no nourishment, no roots, no foundation. And then they would fall back together: connected, rooted, passionate. This was before us and it has always reminded me of us.

When I lie awake with panic in my heart and breath, I fear that you don’t know who I am, don’t see me, don’t understand me. I want to be to you like the dough has become to my hands: constant, true, wonderous, a special alchemy that cannot be replicated. When I find myself activated from the shape that formed me so long ago I want to fall into your arms and find home. I want you to say, “I choose you, I cherish you, I will do this hard work of healing next to you, so that we can choose our own shapes now.”

Yes, this is what I dream of, these are the stories that dwell in the lines between what I write. Four hours of resting and the dough is ready for its final knead. It has transformed and I feel an ache inside; the ache to become the metaphor, to become the poem, to become the someone who. A final shaping of dough, cupping it in hands that become infused with the scent of yeast, a sour-sticky melting on skin.

On cold marble dusted with flour, the ball of dough is slowly turned in circles until the bottom sticks to the counter. I have learned not to grip the dough between my hands tightly but rather cradle it and move it in a rhythmic dance of creation; of slow food, a bread that takes two days. A boule with a hard crispy crust, warm when you slice into it. Butter that melts into the soft crumb inviting you to make a cup of tea and pick the radishes from the garden so you can fry them up in butter and top them on the warm bread with silky scrambled eggs, glistening with melted cheese.

If I have forgotten what it is that makes me special, that lights me up, that turns me on-that infuses an obsession in me so great nothing can get in my way-perhaps you have forgotten too. Maybe the dark brown and greying hair that replaced the long blonde hair has felt misleading. Maybe my depression and the new shape of my belly and bottom aren’t a sexy appetizer for a sex that you desire. Maybe the midlife anger that lives in my center and wakes me at night in a puddle of rage is an armor that ties me to the past until I make sense of it.

Finally, the oven is set to 500 degrees and the final rise is not forgiving, there is a window and if you miss it the two days of mixing and kneading and stretching will yield a bread that you don’t recognize as your own. The one thing that I have held as my own, as far back as memories stretch, is that I could tell the stories that were hidden behind closed doors and beautifully staged photos and brags about how well the children are doing and look how much they have accomplished.

I had to tell the truth about the piles of dishes, the baby who I longed for that wouldn’t stop crying, the husband that adored me but only the version that I chose to become for him, the moment I knew that my life was a web of thoughts and the ones I was choosing weren’t leading me to joy. I used to tell our story and then became afraid at what had made me special. Afraid of the anger it might pull forth.

And I smell the wild yeasts of the bread as they bake and my heart stretches towards yours and maybe it is all too late or maybe this is the time we look back on and say, “Look at what we created, look at who we have become, look at what happened when we decided to choose and cherish and do the work of changing shape so we could become the someones who....”