Prompt: “Surgery often looks like murder if you judge it halfway through”

Title: "Food Surgery of Life"

Where is the middle?
Where do you stick in a toothpick, to see
If I am cooked, complete,
All the way through?

These days, it's like I have a whole banquet
In the oven of my life.

Is my education done?
The degree was messy,
Class after class,
Stumbling blurry-eyed
From laptop to toddler,
From class to car rider line
If I studied, they flooded the bathroom sink.
Too often, I awoke
The pattern of computer keys spelling tired across my face.

Career is a delicate dish.
When do you know that one is ready to eat?
It's in, it's out
Change the pan, maybe a cookie sheet
Oh, now it's dripping.
The smoke detector is too loud!

Life's oven off, regroup,
Let it cool.
Time to clean the oven.
But a life is not an iron cell
Empty, gaping, forgotten.

Time to fire it up again.
See if I can cook something that doesn't burn.

My dishes of new recipes
Oooh, a relationship desert,
Let's top it with pillows of delectable meringue
Nicely brown,

Ok,
Well, I think I can repaint that wall above the oven
The singe marks aren't too bad
Now that the fire is out.
A minor setback.

Hungry nights when nothing cooks right.
Dough cooling in the fridge,
A table strewn with drips and spoons,
Flour and pepper and seeds, oh my!

This relationship desert may not happen.

My phone beckoned me.
Oh my, look at that:
The YouTubes of Bikini Bimbos with Blenders
Oh, yeah, mix it, baby!
Makes me want to jump and squeal,
Let me calm down and scribble that recipe:
Surely I could make that,
I could do that,
I could be that.

Yeah, guess I could
Flat, play acting on a phone screen
But when the camera is off
The sticky blender whisked away
I shower and scrub
Still hungry.
Neither of us nourished
By a dessert without a touch,
A taste,
A cuddle.
He can press replay
But we're both still hungry.
Screen pixels never grow my body
Only my imagination.

No shortage of advice from friends,
"Did you preheat Life's Oven?
My sister did and baked a nice job,
Tender AND juicy."

Time to stir it up!
"Back again?" the checkout clerk asks.
"Cooking for a party?" the college advisor asks,
Scanning my classes for a total.

"Now that's going to make a delicious life,
Can you pay for it now?"

Yes, damn it, pay, pay.
Money out, hope out, show my hand,
Give it all I've got.
Let's bake another mess!

Edison said life is mostly finding
All the recipes that aren't the answer,
All the ingredients that never mesh.

I bake, and I bake
And
Every day, the soul eats.

Nourish, growth, forever apparently.
New hunger, new needs
New messes, new life
Always a cycle,
And every now and then,
A souffle year
That does not fall

But even souffles
Are eaten,
Every dish empties,
Even if just scraped into the trash.

I nourish the parts of my life
Sometimes live off crumbs,
But life's an oven on a Baking Show

Feel free to guest star,
But please know
Nothing was killed in the making of our dinner
Except the dream I thought I had.