Sometimes you just wake up and look at the ceiling and realize you've been standing in the same ten-foot square behind a deli counter for twenty years and the flour is under your fingernails and in your hair and in your lungs but it's the wrong kind of flour because it comes in those massive fifty-pound industrial bags and you know exactly how the timers are going to beep before they even start and you realize your whole life has been timed by a grocery store buzzer. You spend your twenties thinking you're just building a cushion and your thirties thinking you need just a little bit more for the lease on that corner spot on 5th street where the light hits the window just right in the morning and you can almost smell the sourdough and the laminated dough of the croissants you know you can make better than anyone in this city but then you look at your bank account and you get that cold feeling in your stomach where you think what if it fails and then you're sixty and you're still wearing the same polyester vest. You know that feeling when you see someone else doing the thing you were supposed to do and you walk past that new bakery three blocks from your apartment and you see the line out the door and you want to scream because you know their crust isn't dark enough and they're rushing the proofing but people are paying twelve dollars a loaf anyway and you're still over at the chain store bagging up those soft flavorless rolls for four bucks. It makes you feel like a COWARD and that's the word that sticks in your throat like dry crumbs because you had the money saved and you had the recipes written down in that blue notebook that's sitting in a drawer under your socks but you were too scared of the city prices and the rent hikes and losing that little bit of security you spent your whole life scraping together so you just stayed where it was safe and now the safety feels like a cage you built yourself. It’s the way your back hurts at the end of the shift and you come home to your apartment and the radiator is clanking and the neighbors are shouting and you wonder if anyone will even remember you were here because you didn't leave anything behind but a million plastic bags and some generic birthday cakes with names you've already forgotten. You talk to the younger girls at the registers and they have all these big plans and you just nod and smile and tell them to go for it but inside you're thinking they’re going to end up just like you because the city just eats you up and it’s so expensive to even breathe and you just keep waiting for the right moment but the right moment was fifteen years ago and you let it walk right past you while you were checking the inventory on frozen puff pastry. Sometimes you think about what would have happened if you just took the risk and maybe you would have gone bankrupt and lost everything but at least you would have been the one in charge of the oven for once instead of just following a corporate manual that tells you exactly how many sprinkles go on a cupcake.