My Aunt's Cake
When I was born I was given three names
One for an author, one for a month, and one for my aunt
She is the most amazing, intelligent, moral, literate, loving, blunt
Woman. And she makes awesome cake.
If you peeked through the lace curtains
Last night, into a small kitchen in a wood house
You would have seen an Aunt, a daughter and a grandmother
Standing around the stove watching the cake rise by oven light.
Beep beep beep beep, the timer dings
The door opens in a waft of sweet sucrose and baked strawberries
In comes the jubilation of a successful assemblage of dessert
From the leftover almost rotten sweet fruit.
Sitting in the refrigerator the berries turned the color of oxblood
Deepening to a red so black it’s like it has been dipped in the darkest chocolate.
As my aunt pulls the cake from the middle rack, the daughter
Leans over to sniff the inside of the oven for the leftover scent of raw cake.
Undeterred by the possibility of failure, these pioneering women
In the art of baking, they place the cake on the cooling rack and wait
As each molecule settles over each other, coating the fruit in a casing of moist sugar
And they wait and wait for it to cool and then take their first bite.
Delectable.
In comes the jubilation of a successful assemblage of dessert
From the leftover almost rotten sweet fruit.
Sitting in the refrigerator the berries turned the color of oxblood
Deepening to a red so black it’s like it has been dipped in the darkest chocolate.
As my aunt pulls the cake from the middle rack, the daughter
Leans over to sniff the inside of the oven for the leftover scent of raw cake.
Undeterred by the possibility of failure, these pioneering women
In the art of baking, they place the cake on the cooling rack and wait
As each molecule settles over each other, coating the fruit in a casing of moist sugar
And they wait and wait for it to cool and then take their first bite.
Delectable.
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