While people watched the Sun God being devoured by a dragon *, I fondled my dough. Her pronouns are She / Her / Dope.
I watch her breathe, I feel her inhale the air of the kitchen. She bubbles, she triples, she puffs like my grandpa used to while smoking his cigars bought underground in a Communist Poland. I employ the warmth of my hands, the patience I did not know I had.
Once a week, I speak with this living thing that smells of promises, yeast, and a calm 3 a.m. neighborhood. Her jar is unwashed, and we both like it that way.
I could also send her letters, as Bonaparte did to his Josephine:
“Don’t wash, I’m coming in three weeks.”
I named her Jagna.
Jagna is from a famous Polish novel written long ago. She was a woman who burned from the inside out, giving away the fires of her desires. She moved from one heart to another with a kind of ferocity that makes you vertiginous. Like my intoxicating dough. Yes.
When I began baking her, I measured her like a life in science class: raw milk, spelt, and a touch of cloves. Timed, written down, alarms set, grams adjusted, ritualized. I was a factory. A soldier. I obeyed.
But she doesn’t—she flares, she collapses if not spoken to properly, she will stick to your hair and make you lose breath if you pinch her without a proper foreplay. I guess—temperamental—is the word.
Two things require this wild attention. Both will die if treated politely. Sourdough. Creativity.
There is also Love. But I’m in mourning now, so let’s ghost it.
Creativity is never careful. It is a sticky thing, trembling under your hands, because paper and paint cost money and you don’t have millionaire patrons who pay for your studios, your coffees, and beautiful books you’ll never read.
Measure it, and it starves. Smother it, and it vanishes, offended. You cannot time it. You cannot tidy it. You must let it slip, if it chooses to, let it leave marks where it pleases. Handle it like I handle Jagna—like a lover who knows what’s too much, what’s too little—and she will rise, coil, stretch, and will feed a whole family.
Sometimes, while pulling on her, my heart becomes lighter than any hair left in her folds. Sometimes I smear ink on paper and feel the same: alive, tickled, terrified, quivering, anticipating. It’s the good kind of dirty.
It is erotic. Nearly violent. Necessary.
I lean over the jar, watching her grow, and I think: this is what life asks of us. Attention. Managing the divine chaos. Hands-on devotion. And maybe we—organisms larger than Jagna—will survive.
- Dragon: https://www.britannica.com/list/the-sun-was-eaten-6-ways-cultures-have-explained-eclipses
