Guilty pleasures

I was eating chocolate layer cake late at night, eating from the mother log. Just me and the cake. No knives or plates involved. The tines of the fork furrowed the sides of the cake like a plowed field, lifting the loamy frosting from the geologic layers of cake. Sowing my calories, I took time to sample the ganache frosting, letting it melt on my tongue like a molten flood, slipping down my throat like a mudflow, until I gagged under the sheer weight of all that chocolate, trying to figure out how to savor it, and coordinate the breath, the breath that couldn’t blow out a bonfire of imaginary candles, too many to count. I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow the cake across the table. Enter a memory, a photograph. I was one, and the cake in front of me was an island in time, taking me on a journey of no return. My starfish hands covered with frosting, my face black as night and my eyes filled with stars.

12/15 Mill Valley Library non-fiction workshop with Sarah Broderick