Everyone knows the world runs on cake. Carrot cake is very popular because people think it sounds healthy. I like chocolate cake and you don't like cake at all though when pressed you admit “sometimes white cake is all right.”
“What color icing?” I ask, and you say “No icing at all.”
I try to picture this austere white cake with nothing cementing its layers together. How will I write on it when it’s your birthday? What will I say?
But it makes sense this is your cake since you are in love with purity, a love you try to hide with dirt and torn clothing and snarling.
I have no use for purity but I’m very fond of you. In our little house the walls cry nicotine tears. Yesterday some horses came to the door. They were wearing green coats. “Listen,” they said, “Can you spare us some flour? We’re baking a cake.”
They’re tears of joy, I tell you. You try to look grim but you can’t fool me.
Dawn Corrigan’s fiction has appeared recently at Monkeybicycle, The Raging Face, 3711 Atlantic, and 55 Words, and is forthcoming at The Dream People, Hobart and Defenestration. Her nonfiction appears regularly at The Nervous Breakdown.