#faultyreplies

it was mostly funny, that was the surprising part. a woman talking to herself across years in the margins of her own work. the recipes themselves were spare, but around them, crammed into the now-yellowed edges, trisha elric had annotated her life in dark ink. too salty, one note said against a soup recipe. the marks were pressed hard enough into the page to leave an indent there. edward sulked for a week. acted like i'd done it on purpose. (i had not. mostly). she read that one twice. something in her turned the parenthetical over in her chest and ached. she moved on. then, a loaf took up nearly a whole page. the recipe practically swallowed it, if not for the small lopsided...thing in faded ink, tucked in the corner beneath a note about proofing times. the lines were uneven, scribbled by a very small hand, probably gripping the pen too tightly. it had a face...or maybe the lines on it were meant to be steam. all of it rendered by someone who could not yet be trusted with the concept of a straight line. it was encircled by a much steadier line of ink. beside it, careful not to cross it out: al's. he says it is the bread saying hello.