Julianna Holshue - To My Dear Little One baking

Spacious embryo,

Born of a monogrammed sweatered father

Unkeen on weaning his sighs, whose lashings of tongue and cheek

Bore through my breast, soaked my heart in butter

until it became fat—

my heart, not your fleshy place of rest under the navel.

I baked a pie for him, a pie

so tart it coughed bile in the morning,

Made my sandals too tight,

My hair too shiny.

The oven was too hot

When the ceramic egg timer buzzed—

I pushed my hand inside too sudden and

burnt my thumb: a hot noose appeared.

I was told to trim the fat,

(By who, I don’t remember)

So I used a knife

To scrape at the burnt caramel on the crust—

Flat as I was once, dark as I am now.

Edited by Sofía Aguilar (@sofiaxaguilar)

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JULIANNA HOLSHUE is a recent Rowan University graduate and an Editorial and Social Media intern at Mango Publishing. She was previously a Media Editor for Glassworks magazine, which is a publication of Rowan University's Master of Arts in Writing. She would love to be an editor and is interested in writing and illustrating her own zines and children's books on the side. When she's not writing, she is listening to the Magnus Archives podcast, supporting independent artists, or thinking about having another cup of tea.