The Porch Screen Door

My head was aching as we prepared the crescent rolls. Cathartic: watching the dough ball flatten into a squarish blob under the pressure of my throbbing hands, cutting through the fleshy tablecloth of precooked bread - feeling like some deranged, head-ached surgeon from South America - and arranging the partitioned trianges of rolls-to-be into sections, rolling those limp triangles into suddenly elegant croissants, placing them on baking sheets, putting them in that fiery hell of an oven, and watching them emerge - purged from any elasticity in thought or decision: now, clearly, inequivocally: crescent rolls. My head continued to pound, echoing and accentuating my punching of the dough. Punch. Pound. Punch. Pound. Everything was suddenly dizzy. The fire of brimstone in our GE was no longer confined - everything was suddenly much too hot. I spun, away from the portion of dough I was punching, away from the smoldering oven, away from creating and cooking. I found my hand on the cool door knob of the front porch door. It steadied me, but my movements were still laced with lurching. I twisted the knob, willing any breeze to wash me, any cool breath to whisper its sterile goodness on my too hot, aching head. I stumbled into the screen door of the porch, bombarded with the metallic, dirty smell peculiar to front door screens. That mesh of an entrance cushioned my head, grounding me physically and mentally. I breathed in again, and this time, the clinicality of the crisp air travelling through those miniscule squares of screen was enough to rally me. It was as if I was breathing filtered air, purified and enhanced air. I stepped backward, back to those rolls and the now bearable heat of the kitchen. My head was only scarcely throbbing.