Chocolate Chip Cookie

by Marcia Woodard

Chocolate Chip Cookie

1.

Gently fold the chips into the dough. Gently. Fold. The dough. The dough. Semi sweet. A truckload of sweet. Eighteen-wheeler sweet. Cream the butter. Creamery butter. Reverse its evolution one step. Hear the smooth slap against the side of the bowl. Add the egg. Origin. Mother. Beat until smooth. Smooth the beat. Sugar, sugar, sugar. Sift together the dry ingredients. The dust, the remainder. Gradually add. Mix well. Mix it up. Well and good.

2.

I get tired eating. So tired. Of eating. I count the chocolate chips. I count the six calories in each chip. Times 12 chips. 72 calories. I spit one out. 66 calories. Burning hot calories. The heavy cream of the butter coats my tongue. Fur coat. Heavy. Coated. How much butter in one cookie if there is a half cup in the whole batch? Always the addition of counting. How much. How many. So much easier to count zero.

3.

If I have one, I’ll have another. Then another. Another. Another. My mother. I’ll go to the store and buy another dozen. I’ll eat them in the car. Buy another. Dozen. My mother used to bake chocolate chip cookies like this. I will keep eating and eating. I will eat until I forget my mother. Until I forget the cookies. Until I forget.

4.

Drop by teaspoonful. The scoop and scrape of the spoons. Teaspoons full of hot chocolate chip cookies. 350 degrees. Two sections of newspaper spread out on the kitchen counter with a row of paper towels on top. Always this way. The hot cookies removed from the cookie sheet and placed onto the paper towels. Edged golden brown. The gold, the brown. The protection of the paper towels. The greasy, circular footprints. A white, plastic spatula. A yellow, terry oven mitt. Timing is everything: tick, tick, tick, ring. Cooled cookies lined up like dominoes across the back of the newspaper. Like dominoes falling into my hands. Like dominoes falling into my mouth.