The Dessert

The kitchen ceiling melted into blue,

A clock spun backward, losing half its hands.

Grandmother’s apron smelled of morning dew,

And spilled across the floor in shifting sands.

Upon the table—carved from liquid glass—

A single tin of rust and crimson light.

She sliced the crust to watch the shadows pass,

And bleeding cherries spilled into the night.

I took a bite, and gravity undid

The heavy anchors pulling at my chest.

I fell through memories that childhood hid,

Into a summer where the sun confessed.

The seeds were planets orbiting my tongue,

Sweet nectar tasting of a vanished year,

When songs of mourning had not yet been sung,

And every phantom shape was crystal clear.

The pie tin vanished, swallowed by the floor,

Leaving a stain of starlight and of stone.

I stood forever at that screen-door door,

Forever tasting time, and not alone.