The Dessert

The summer warped, dissolving at the seams,

Where grandmother’s kitchen bled into old dreams.

A clock without hands ticked backward through air,

While ruby-glass teardrops hung frozen up there.

She pulled from the embers a basin of lead,

Where mountains of obsidian crusted and bled.

The cherries were planets, too heavy to rise,

Juice made of twilight, bubbling up to the skies.

Beneath a lattice of bone-white and lime,

The pastry was tethered to stretches of time.

A pinch of forgotten, a spoonful of rust,

Weighed down with the gravity of turning to dust.

She served me a slice on a platter of moon,

To be eaten with thoughts instead of a spoon.

And biting the crust as the centuries spun,

I tasted the year that had never begun.