Sprinkled with Mistakes

Sprinkled with Mistakes:

When summer days still kissed my eyelashes,
Like my mother’s lips with words of praise,
I remember watching the intricate movements of her fingers,
Delicately fusing the edges of the dough.

Mama said I could fabricate my own world,
Out of the ingredients that sprinkled the kitchen table,
One with exotic tastes and flavors that traveled the world,
One where the boundaries were formed by my own hands.

Mama said I could reach the top shelve,
Yet I reached for the book that could control my actions,
Holding the recipes that closed my mind,
Only blindly following measurements,
That told me what to taste, and see, and feel.
Fear pulled me back to the safety of those words,
Forming a simple cookie cutter world.

Mama said I could wreak havoc to find bliss,
But I was afraid to change my plain creations,
No distinction or personality,
Your average over salted chocolate chip cookies.

Then mama showed me her apron, splattered by mistakes,
Speckled with courage found in her cluttered past,
She told me to start crafting my world from scratch,
Because no one wants a recipe,
Even if there are imperfections and messes in the middle,
They just want a story discovered by the hands of the maker.

Now I fabricate a new beginning in my world,
Without meticulously trying to recover others footsteps,
I can finally sprinkle my own into this world.
Because mama said I could do anything.