The Butterfly Cake

92% cacao. This ganache was as dark as night, thick, and steaming out of my double-boiler. I could smell the deep, bitter chocolate, as startling as a fresh cup of coffee at 4 AM. I loved the scent, the sensation of awakening to a beautiful surprise, like a glowing sunrise or my mother making me breakfast.

Living alone, however, I had not celebrated many surprises recently. Many ghosts passed through my house, ghosts of people who had once appreciated my existence. I could feel their cold fingers prodding me as I laid in bed this morning, staring up at a ceiling I had needed to repaint a year ago. The days had passed slower than molasses, and I had felt myself draining through them in quite the same way. Today, however, I had decided that I needed that beautiful surprise in order to awaken myself.

You know, Amarah, making a wedding cake for yourself when you're not even getting married seems pretty stupid, one ghost murmured. She sounded like Jules, my once-best-friend who had decided that I was not cool enough to stay friends with her after high school. Her Instagram was full of pictures of her new friends, people much prettier and more interesting than myself, or so I had felt.

The three layers of the cake, however, said otherwise. They were perfectly round, milk chocolate with almonds. Being shy meant that expressing myself too little made me seem like a potential serial killer, and expressing myself too much made people wonder why I was now so talkative. So I learned to express myself through baking. I knew every flavor my friends liked, that my parents liked, that even my crush had liked. They loved the cakes, everyone liked one sort of sweet or another. Yet behind the warm smells, the buttercream, and the candy roses, I had to wonder if they had liked me.

I stared at the layers as I finished each one. As I admired them, another ghost whispered in my ear. You didn't chop the almonds. You always chop the almonds in the cake. Sean, with his sparkling hazel eyes and pretty, critical lips, always had a comment to make about my cakes. He had hated almond cake. But I liked un-chopped almonds.

The ganache needed to cool for a few moments, and so I made the decorations. Golden butterflies, which had once flown in my stomach when I had first seen Sean in my junior year of high school, now came alive with edible golden leaf. As I connected and lifted their wings, I saw how lovely they were, now that they were not hiding in fear in the dark cavity inside of me. They would stand daintily on the edges of the layers of my cake, ready to fly if they so chose. I let them sit for a moment, and prepared the silver and gold icing for piping over the ganache. The butterflies glittered, their fragile forms scaring away the negative specters floating around my kitchen for a few moments.

I poured the ganache, slipping and smoothing it over the cake like a tight black dress. It cooled and molded onto the cake, and I smiled at it. The layers were seamless, the cake could have been the centerpiece of a wedding.

Yet another ghost came and snickered in my ear. They were bold today. You know everyone thinks you're a weirdo, right? Becca, another "friend", had informed me that I needed to draw even further back into my chrysalis, as formless eyes had judged me for being too quiet for them. I could not win. Or so I thought.

Silver and gold wrapped around the luscious cake, ribbons that danced in a circle the way we did as kids. Yet they did not fall down, but rather continued to twinkle and laugh with their lovely sheen. However, my butterflies seemed to whisper to me, their own voices bright and curious: We need a flower! Only you can give us a flower to drink! And so I created a daffodil out of some colorful fondant. Bright, yellow, springy, it rose from the top of the cake and shouted its jubilant presence.

Yet nothing announced its presence more than the golden butterflies. With the gentlest tweezers holding their wings, I put their feet softly onto the edges of the cake, in a wild array of directions. Butterflies did not move in an orderly fashion, but flocked and fluttered until they found their perches. They were uneven on my cake, but I could not help but smile anyway.

The ghosts became silent, their eyes wide and stunned by my creation. Sunlight glowed from the windowsill and sparkled on my butterflies' gold wings. My happiness emerged in the same way, in little sparkles. In this quiet kitchen, I did not have to prove myself to anyone. I did not have to listen to the ghosts which tried to keep me from growing my own wings. The sun rose, and soon they vanished, helpless against the resilience of the morning. They were in the past, the wisps of a lost night. Perhaps they would come back to haunt me tomorrow. Their criticisms would echo again, and I would get little sleep. Today, however, I rose with the butterflies, stretching, healing, greeting the dawn.