Death Cake

I baked a cake

Though I don’t remember deciding to

Maybe I did

Maybe the idea decided me

The flour wouldn’t stay still

It kept rising in little ghosts

Reminding me of something I forgot

Or pretended to forget

Or convinced myself I’d already remembered

I stirred anyway

The spoon felt heavier each time

As if the batter was learning me

Pulling pieces of thought

Into its thick

Slow orbit

I told myself it was fine

I tell myself that often

The batter didn’t believe me

The oven door reflected my face

But not the one I wear

The other one

The one that watches from behind my eyes

When I’m trying too hard to seem whole

The cake rose unevenly

Like a thought I couldn’t finish

Because another thought interrupted

And then another

And then the first one came back

But slightly wrong

Tilted

As if it had been rewritten

By someone who only half understood me

When I cut into it

The center collapsed

A soft implosion

Like a memory folding in on itself

To hide something sharp

I tasted it

It tasted like a question

I’ve been circling for years

The kind that grows teeth

The longer you avoid answering it

By the third bite

I wasn’t sure if I was eating the cake

Or if the cake was eating the parts of me

That still believed in straight lines

Clear thoughts

Stable ground

By the last bite

I understood nothing

And somehow that felt

Like the closest I’d ever come

To understanding anything at all