CAKE 

I’d never had cake. Not for my birthday, or a party, to celebrate or simply “just because”. But I always felt a strong pull to it and suspected I could have it. It was everywhere in surplus, the supermarket isles of premade cake packaged in a clear thick package calling every passer-by, rows of boxed cake mix- chocolate, red velvet, funfetti, carrot- boasting of relative ease, the accessibility just within reach. Stacks of flour and sugar and baking powder littered the shelves with ‘two-ingredient recipes’ strategically placed on the smooth packaging paper. And sitting on the shelves in my home were the very ingredients I needed to make the decadent goodness for which my throat longed. And they taunted me with their hollow eyes and weak cries. But I never had cake. I guess I never really wanted cake, I just wanted the illusion, the knowledge that I could have it. Then the ingredients gathering dust would have a purpose and not serve only as a manifestation of my neurosis. I could walk past the isles of cupcakes and sheet cakes and boxed cake and icing sugar and claim I was detached. I only observed but never indulged.

But, in an abstract yet tangible way, I had the cake I avoided. It sat perched upon the high shelf in my kitchen disguised as flour and sugar and salt and vanilla. It peered at me from the back of the fridge, the eggs, the butter, the milk. I shuddered every time I caught a glimpse of the rusty tins tucked expertly in a dark corner of my pantry because it reminded me that the cake was all but done. Whether I mixed the parts together or dug a gulf between them, it existed. Yet I ignored this salient fact, perhaps because the concept of cake scared me just as much as it brought me relief.

So, I scowled when it was presented to me, shaking my head and secretly wanting to reach out and grab it. I eyed the soft crumbs as they rolled down the juicy slope. I watched the icing leave its sugary trail as it was scooped from the plate to the mouth. And the soundless way it was devoured deafened me the way one cowers at the sound of scratching metal. Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three. Each year I would collapse with my head between my palms sobbing, rocking back and forth, attempting to self-soothe. No cake again this year, just me and a kitchen full of ingredients. I wanted cake; I daydreamed of it. I wanted to absorb it through my tongue, stuffing my face and smearing the icing on my lips. The softness of the sponge, the smoothness of the sweet. The way it caressed my cheeks as I moved it from side-to-side devouring its matter. The relieving gulp that sent it shooting down my throat and the satisfying thump as it hit my stomach. I would dominate it, own it, control it, manipulate it, and it would lose its hold over me.

“Cake!” I screamed over again staring at the clumping sugar and spoiled milk. “Cake!” I would cry in agony when my chest longed for an unsatiated sweetness. The thought, the idea controlled me every hour. If only I had cake, I thought to myself as I dug my nails into my lanky thighs. And when I had drawn blood and could no longer withstand my sorrow, I caved. Scouring the internet I found the perfect recipe, determined to accomplish the masterpiece. Sift the flour, cream the butter, beat the eggs. Meticulously I created what I craved. Cake. And when I finally beheld my creation calmness washed over me. “Cake”, I said breathlessly in a squeaky whisper. Here it was, all the ingredients in harmony. And I greedily devoured it, pushing it down my gullet as I had always dreamt. The more I swallowed, the dizzier I felt, till I lay on the kitchen floor clutching a handful of cake in my weak grip, the icing coating my lips, unable to wake.