Black and grey lotus on upper arm

Stop blaming the brush. You load it too wet and the petals drown before they open. Dip the tip, drag it across the saucer until it is nearly dry, then let the edge do the work. Each petal is one breath. Lift off before you run out of air, and let the grey thin out on its own, the way the ink goes pale toward the bottom of the jar.

It is four o'clock and the first tray is already on the rack, so I am writing this on the back of an order slip with flour still on my thumb. Yesterday the man from the florist's on Carver Street came in for his usual rye and stood at the counter staring at the sketchbook you keep leaving by the proving baskets. He asked who had drawn the lotus. I told him a boy who had not yet learned where to stop. He laughed and said it looked as if the flower had been caught mid-sigh.

The dots are the seed head, so put them last, when your hand has stopped trembling from the effort of the petals. Do not go back to fix a petal that has dried in the wrong curl. Leave it. Your grandmother used to say a bloom is never perfect, only finished, and that a baker learns more from the loaf that split on the side than from the one that rose straight.

If you come in before the shutters go up, bring the sketchbook and I will show you the page I kept from my first winter here. There is a lotus on it that I never managed to finish, and I have looked at its open petals every morning since, pressing my palm to the warm dough while the sky turns grey over the car park. Bring the brush too. The ink is in the drawer under the flour scoop, and the oven will be hot enough by then to see your breath fog on the glass.