The Dessert

The kitchen is quiet now,

save for the cooling hum of the refrigerator

and the ghost of cinnamon still lingering

at the back of the throat.

Outside, the autumn wind strips the branches,

a restless architect rearranging the yard.

Inside, I stand at the counter

tracing the fluted edge of an empty tin.

An apple crumble pie.

It demands a certain kind of patience—

peeling back the crimson skins to reveal

the pale, stubborn heart of the fruit,

tossing them in sugar and sharp lemon,

as if memory needed preserving

in spice and heat.

And the topping:

cold butter cut into flour and oats with a pastry blender,

worked by hand until it resembles coarse sand,

then scattered like loose gravel over the orchard’s yield.

We ate it warm.

Ice cream melting into the jagged valleys,

turning the brown sugar crust to a sweet, amber paste.

We spoke in fragments between bites,

the way people do when the day has been heavy

and the dark comes too early.

Now, only crumbs remain.

A solitary raisin stuck to the porcelain.

The butter has hardened again.

I wonder when we stopped tasting the season

and started just watching it pass through the glass.

The pie is gone,

its warmth migrating into the room,

leaving behind the quiet work of digesting

what was sweet,

and what was baked too fast.