Baking for Jai

By Kim Walters

I am baking
for a little boy I didn't really know.
Scent of chocolate, cinnamon, warm butter
slip through the window
cracked just enough on this dreary spring day
to allow oven-warmed air
to escape
high to the heavenly clouds
above my house
above my town
where other mothers like me
with hearts heavy and hands slow
are baking
because what else can we do?
thinking: how sad,
how impossible

how?

How it good must smell
in the heavenly clouds
above my town.

I hope he smells it, too.