The smell of cinnamon

Our mother closed the door because we do not know how to return if we go out. She turned the key in the black lock, and took it out with the same lightness with which she brought us back to the kitchen before eating, and with the same carefulness befitting a housewife like her. She did this with a purpose we only discovered after we forgot its weight and the place where it was kept. She kept it until a time when we were forced to get used to it as we got used to her, and to obey her authority as a member who has become feminine through connection, or as something we played with during the cradle stage, biting it, and rubbing it against our gums during the teething season. We learned from her caution to look at it, while it was in her hand, as a sixth finger that had grown for her to hold us tightly so we wouldn’t be lost, like our brothers who went away, and like our father who is no longer here.