by Jackie Donaldson
I had a friend who baked.
Apple turnovers were cooling on the rack when we met.
I crawled inside a warm, soft atmosphere of cinnamon.
Greasy pizza boxes were sitting on the stove.
Dried apple goo cracked in the corners of his mouth
when he smiled.
He dismantled a hill of yellow citrus suns
scraped their flesh against a grater
and squeezed the juice
from their fleshy membranes.
In the double boiler
he whisked the entrails
into the yokes, the sugar, and the salt.
After the thickening
he filled a glass
with viscous, golden
lemon curd.
Everything was moving slow.
The first saccharine
and tart taste
thickly coated the inside of his mouth
before he filled two pie crusts
and stitched them up
with a doughy lattice.
He gave one to an old man at the church
where he worked as a musician.
He kept the butter cold
but pliable
and rubbed it into the flour.
He turned puff pastry
into lemon tarts.
I don’t think he loved to bake.
I think he was someone
who needed a lot of distractions.
His place was full of brass instruments
spider plants, piano keyboards
and circuit boards.
The shelves were stacked with board games
model cars, and books
covering all things.
He had this picture of himself as a kid hanging on the fridge.
When he was down
it was as if he were suddenly trapped in this web of darkness.
I think looking at the photo helped him remember to care for
himself.
When he was happy
he was electrifying.
I wanted to stand in his magnetic field.
He filled my sad, little life with intrigue.
Everything was poetry
piano, Anna Karenina
quickbreads, Japanese
musical theater.
We read Angels in America out loud together.
I was Harper. He was the Rabbi.
There was a lilt in his voice
that made it evident he was a teacher.
The dragged out so.
The does that make sense?
It did something to me.
He was conventionally hot
a Gemini
who wanted someone who would laugh at his mean jokes
but that could never be me.
He cooked rigatoni bolognese.
Fat hollow noodles in a slurry of beef and vegetables.
He said make sure you et before you come over
which stung a little.
I never ate before I saw him
If I could help it.
I wanted to be as skinny as possible
when we were together.
It didn’t make any difference.
A submarine would have imploded
at the depths that I loved this man
who would not share his dinner with me
after I drove for ninety minutes to see him
on that cold, black winter night.
It was a Thursday.
I often did this.
I parked a block away from his studio above a storefront
and traipsed through the snow to get to his door.
We sat together on a cat hair covered futon.
He brought me a glass of tap water and put his arm around me.
I was looking around
imagining all my things mixed in with his.
It was never going to be what I wanted it to be.
I could feel the tension
magnifying
in the spaces between us.
We moved to the bed
which had one blanket,
one solitary flat pillow.
He undid his belt
exposed his bulging
rigatoni bolognese
filled body.
The white bright headlights of a passing car
shone through the lavender curtains
and in their passing beam
two bodies came together.
Around midnight
he said it’s getting late,
his way of telling me that I should go.
so I left.
I drove all the way back home
and ate alone.
Jackie Donaldson is a writer, teacher, and PhD student in English at The University of Connecticut. Her work has been published in The Ana, The Vehicle, Loud Coffee Press, and elsewhere. Connect with Jackie on Instagram @jacquiverse and Bluesky Social @jackieverse.