Sourdough Starter Keeps Score

What if the sourdough starter bubbling on the counter isn't rising from yeast alone, but from every kitchen it has passed through. The baker feeds it flour and water, believes she owns a living thing, but the culture carries residue: a grandmother's humid pantry, a stranger's careless spoon, decades of rooms it never asked to remember. Each fold of dough might be translation, not creation. The sour tang could be argument, a hundred kitchens disagreeing about what bread should taste like. Cut into the crust and something older than the recipe exhales. The starter does not die when discarded. It waits in the drain, in the rag, in the air of the next house, patient for flour.