To Unmake

I don't want to leave 
a corpse in the kitchen,

a half a side of beef, unbutchered, 
too big to keep and soon to rot,
unwieldy and difficult to lift

on your own. With the children,
manageable, but cold and stiff, 
an unfamiliar frame.

Better if you all came home 
amazed! that someone never here left
a loaf of bread, warm, as if fresh baked,
  
as if by magic, as if by fairy or god,
as if by mother, as if by wife,
as if there ever were, as if forever there—