He sends cake

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He sends me cake. He sends it in little plastic boxes that I wash and then stack in my closet, towers rising up out of the piles of bags and shoes. He sends me all varieties; all shapes, sizes and colours, he sends me cake until I can smell it on my fingers and taste it in my breath, until his gentle gift seems to haunt my every, heavy step. He sends me cake and I eat it, dutifully, reverently. It is my most religious act, my fork poised as the sacrificial knife, wrecking havoc and holiness with each blow. I eat though every bite seems a pound of flesh, and every uneaten crumb a blow in the face of his affections.

I am so sad. He knows this. He has seen it before. He has heard the stories. (Do you know what she did? In her parents house? Yes, and to her own body!) And so, in his love, he sends me cake.

He does not (as far as I can tell) suffer under the delusion that it is baked eggs and sugar that assuage pain or creamy topping that bring a more lasting contentment. He sends me cake, for, in his mind, he will by feeding my body strengthen my spirit to wage war on my mind.

“You must eat!” he says to me. An understatement on his part, as my cheeks hollow with grief and my bones begin to protrude. “You must eat!” he says, “Or they will take you from me, take you and all your clothes to the palace of locked doors. They will lock you and shock you and you’ll come out a perfect citizen!”

He loves me. He loves me and in this time of my lost lines, his love congeals into light, fluffy dessert. He treads our many roads and recipes alone to find himself again at the edge of my sick bed, where I lounge, a twisted, shattered Aphrodite, palms outstretched, crying out silently for salvation and sustenance.

In my bedroom, in my mind’s eye, I see myself, seated among my dead flowers and my books. I see myself growing with each bite, colossal mounds of flesh winding slickly around my slender body, hiding it, killing it. I am afraid, I am afraid of the cake he sends. And so, although I know it to be a sin, a sometimes hide the cake. I hide it from me, I hide it from him, I hide from my mother and my father and the starving African children they always remind me of when I push my dinner plate away. And though he knows my fear of the fat and the fate, he sends me cake

He sends me cake. He sends it in little plastic boxes that I stack among my bags and my shoes on the floor of my closet. He sends me cake and the smell of the icing and the sugar intermingles with that of the rotting flora and the musty books. And through my hydroplaning and my hoping, through my insecurities and my infidelities, he has loved me. And he has sent me cake.

• gripping

  by mmacs

  Posted Aug 31, 2008
  +4
  it's gripping and daunting. i was instantly intrigued as to who the giver and whatever drastic effects the cake will leave upon the character.
  
  no hidden meanings you say?
  
  i'm a bit taken aback by the fact that this piece has no hidden meaning. I was delving deep into wh... (read more)

• Michael
  Aug 22, 2008
  I feel like there's a very important, well thought-out metaphor somewhere in this story that I'm failing to truly understand. Would it be incredibly silly of me to ask exactly what the cake represents (if anything)? I have a vague idea, but I'd still like to hear it straight from the author's mouth, so to speak... unless, of course, you'd rather not explain it. Sometimes it's better not to. When people ask me to interpret my own poetry for them, I usually just tell them to read it again more carefully, because I don't want to bastardize the delicate meaning I put into the poem by spelling it out in such plain and simple language. Oh well. It's up to you : )

• Date Added
• Aug 22, 2008 at 5:35 PM
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