Cake for One

There is something profoundly dishonest about memory.

Preserving to ease, protecting to erase.

Collecting moments of laughter and held hands in a crowded room

Perhaps that's why heartbreak feels so confusing.

It isn't the loss. It's the editing.

Memories are only meant for those that hold love like poets or face totality like cynics. 

I keep returning to people who no longer exist. Not because they died, but because memory refuses to acknowledge that the version that was never permanent.

Memory hates facts because facts demand consistency. Memory only requires a feeling.

Memories of hugs

and cakes.

Sweet and soft, pretty. Meant to be enjoyed and destroyed with 2 forks
and laughter
napkins and such.

Covered in lovely flowers, delicate and delicious.
The kind of thing one instinctively protects from being dropped.

Forgetting that a cake meant for two was always too heavy for one to carry alone.

I remain...desperately holding on to the promises of memories

Meant for two.

Is now on the floor, laying at my feet

For just a moment of silence I stare at my new reality trying to understand how something so beautiful became something impossible to salvage.

But you know, even catastrophe has blind spots

and so…

I reach to grab a fork, leaving the other behind.
and
sit gently, intentionally on the ground enjoying the untouched layers
I breathe in this the moment, meant only for me

and smile as I am reminded that somewhere in the kitchen, 

there's still an oven…