At the start of quarantine, I panic-buy

four bananas at the stocked grocery store.

I should have fruit in the house.

I like bananas just fine but never get them.

I pick out the greenest ones I can find

to give myself a chance.

​

For days, they rest like beached boats,

brown into summer-splotched shoulders.

A revelation: bananas gone too ripe

can be repurposed, mashed into

banana bread loaves, my favorite food

from my mother’s repertoire.

I have never made it myself,

but it is the time of new things

and baking memories into being.

​

My mother is lawless in the kitchen

and has no banana bread doctrine

or spell for me to follow, so I find one online.

Measure out 1 cup granulated sugar,

1 teaspoon baking soda, 1 tablespoon control.

You are both adult and child, add melted butter.

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I pull my bread out of the oven

and sprinkle sugar on its brown

earth crust, into its fault line,

then wait with forced patience

and a phantom burnt tongue

for the bread to cool.

When it’s ready, I eat a bite of home

and call my mom to tell her

my banana bread rivals hers.

​

And suddenly it feels wrong,

like I have de-pedestaled her bread

to hold it in my hands.

Made common this thing

I have considered magic.