"Cookies" by Mary Soon Lee

Cookies

Mary Soon Lee

Yesterday I ate my childhood

with chocolate chips:

one shortbread cookie

that once I would have called

a biscuit,

buttery and sweet

as the cookies

that Mrs. Latchmore sold

in the small bakery

in the small row of shops

near the house

I used to live in,

in the days when I rode home

on the blue plastic seat

of my mother's small blue car,

a white paper bag

of Mrs. Latchmore's cookies

waiting beside me,

the everyday happiness

of small treats.

Poet's Notes:​  One day, shopping for groceries, I happened to buy some chocolate chip cookies that tasted almost exactly like the cookies I'd loved most when I was little. For a moment, I was a child again. It's not always the large things that I miss--Christmas, catching the ferry to France for a family holiday. Sometimes, it's the small things: a bag of cookies; sitting in the car beside my mother.