▦ little colossus ▦

There is nothing particularly important about this kitchen. We push and push upon this great big mound of dough, it always seems to be expanding.

We are not sure where it came from, perhaps one day it arrived in the mail, we took it in like a good mother should and nursed it up, cradled it, washed it in a tub of milk.

Boundless little child, stretching upward. Perhaps if we reach in far enough we feel a little spine, growing upwards as a great spire, peeking up to see over the trees. We tell it to keep good posture.

She smacks her hands against her apron: one, two, three; A white cloud of flour hovering by her waist. It settles on the thick oak floorboards below, which are scuffed up as a result of many years of laborers coming in and out of the little room.

We make pamphlets that we toss up into the sky; Every once in a while one of them lands in the vicinity of a pedestrian, and they pick it up with a puzzled expression. These people are now our bakers.

Soon the dough will be too large to fit inside such a little room. Our colossus tells us tales.
It leans over and says in her ear:

“Outside the train station comes a whirring, wheezing sound. Pipes clatter inside this ancient machinery. Reach out, mother, and touch its centipede belly, it will scorch your hand. Can you hear the ticks climbing under its flesh? Do you know that this station is made of leeches? Can you feel your feet, on the ground, shriveling and going pale with each step you take?”

Other times it only omits a faint, melodic, murmuring sound, and we all become silent like death and listen.

Until then we knead: She beats eggs in a bowl, sometimes a little creature springs forth from the egg, which she clasps by the leg and puts in her apron pocket. I do not know what she does with them.
I take a paint brush with bristles from the hide of a boar, and I use it to coat our colossus in egg wash. We do this every few hours, as with each coat it absorbs the wash up and wails until another is received.

I would not have gone into the baked goods industry if I knew it involved such depravity.