A piece of my house is dancing merrily down the road and I wonder if I should chase after it, but that would mean I’d have to put down the piece of cake I’m eating.
There’s a certain kind of buttery icing that melts my heart, sets my teeth to tingling, and rivals sex. It tends toward the creamy side, rather than the sweet, and you just know that if a drop of it spills on your clothing it will leave a grease mark that will never come out.
After glow.
I like my cakes plain and moist. A mild vanilla, a subtle strawberry, a deep chocolate. Soft enough to soak in all that melting of the icing, so that when you cut a slice you can see where the line of demarcation has sunk in. Like a tide line on the shore.
Other things keep falling off my house in the constant winds of late: the top of my chimney. Pieces of my eaves. The incessant wind means that no one can climb up on a tall ladder to put those things to rights. The wind keeps howling things down. The wolf is at the door.
Cake batter is as good as cake, maybe even slightly better. It’s that rare thing, the prologue to the main event that can stand alone, if need be. It’s OK if a person gets overcome and devours the batter before it can be baked into traditional cake form. Cake has many lives.
As a child I loved to lick the batter off the cake mixer beaters, the gooey softness a substitute for things I did not have, and longed to have.
The back of my house is also drunk and disorderly, the garden gnome toppled over into the long weeds, the grass is waist high, the wind ripples through everything. My house creaks like an old boat.
Who decided that cake has to come last in the pecking order of the meal? A cake can have its just deserts and serve as breakfast.
Oh, the bliss, of crushing the last crumbs of the cake with a fork and licking them off, and then licking the plate too.
Eating it and having it too.
Another piece of the front of my house rips off and twirls away. The wind beats at us, frolicking with vacuous intent as the sun shines upon the jagged edges of the place I call home. I imagine making a giant vat of cake batter and slathering it all over my tender home. My heart.
Some things just can’t be helped.
But cake is always possible.
Amy says
Beautiful words put together all in a row! Pure poetry. I love the cake batter being the prologue to the main event.