Had I saved the last cupcake until this very moment
it would be stale,
abused by time, and unable to fulfill
its promise of the softest cream and a quiet explosion melting the tongue like
a kiss.
Lips meeting lips…
Had I saved the last cupcake,the sprinkles would have faded, or fallen
to the floor to be swept up with cocktail straws and losing lottery tickets.
I would not have known the particular scent of vanilla cake as it mingled with that of his neck,
slightly warm.
A sigh , a toast to no one at all…
The last cupcake was all that remained from an anonymous, machine-produced batch.
Feigning innocence, the sweet didn’t mean anything at all–just another piece of indigestible trash–before she picked it up.
She animated it with her smile, with her suggestive walk and a gesture to
follow me.
It took on a life of its own in the moments remaining. The light began to bend
and all the thoughts flashed between them, wishes for parallel worlds and new names and genius and enlightenment and coffee and then there was a half-second of Despair as she raised it to her lips.
But –help them!– they ate cake, and chased it down with vodka
and giggles and the certainty they had done something a little wrong, and brilliant.
She carries a book of poems, and steps on summer cherries on sparkling concrete, remembering…
The last cupcake exists now as a clear
and imperfect piece of my imagination.
At best, it is a memory and no longer precise or unstained by subsequent inspirations and missed assignments,
92.5 % pure.
At worst, a metaphor.
Those are dangerous.
