Strawberry Shortcake 16.06.022

All those times

he washed and cut potatoes and beets,

oven-roasted

in vintage amber glassware

(sunflower oil, salt, and thyme);

all those salads delicately prepared—

not a one

containing the despised tomato.

Every mini loaf of banana bread;

every sable, each macaron

(he used to forget and leave eggs out for too long—

days, sometimes— 

he was the first to explain to me

that one at room temperature

would whip up far better).

He never touched red meat.

Oh, there were times— too few,

too far between— when tables were turned

and I’d be the one to prepare a dish:

the tomato-based soup

(there was a lot of it)

before I knew he hated tomatoes;

the thirty coconut cupcakes

for his thirtieth birthday;

I wish I could say there was more,

that somehow I’d forgotten something;

that— though I know

my memory does not serve me—

I could say, today,

that things were eluding me

more than normal.

Too few, too far between.

It is 90 degrees in my apartment.

Mid-June.

Sweat collects

about my crown, droplets

forming dripping circlets,

dribbles trickling down my neck.

Amassing about my eyebrows;

caressing the small of my back.

The cake—

the cake is store-bought.

The whipped cream comes from a can:

a distinct aftertaste of aerosols and nitrous oxide,

though unctuous— and sweet— all the same.

I am hovering over the kitchen sink,

paring knife quartering freshly-washed strawberries,

glistening like the back of my neck.

Maybe, I think to myself:

maybe if I had done this for him,

he would have loved me.