#spwm

But How Do You Say No

You wake up one morning to your mother yelling at you to help her with the laundry. Stumbling out of your room rubbing sleep-crusted eyes, you pass by your father. You have not spoken him since your fight a week ago when he complained about how millenials think they know everything, interspersed with observations of the failures of Arabs and Filipinos. You are both getting better at ignoring each other.

Your brothers are still asleep in their beds as you fold the still-warm clothes, pulling the edges so they do not crease. After a cold shower - the heater has been broken for six months now - your mother asks you to go down to the supermarket with her.

When you check your phone, your boss is asking if you can come in for an extra shift. Your other boss is telling you that you need to help out for another event. Your sort-of boyfriend asks if you want to meet for dinner. Maybe he will tell you what the hell's going on in his head today. 

On the train, your lack of height means someone accidentally karate chops your neck as they don't see you when they bring their hand from holding onto the overhead pole. You mumble an apology. Five minute later you wonder why you did.

The cats you feed in your work estate hate you no matter how much you try to smother them with love. You refill their bowl of kibble anyway, occasionally leave a fish. You try not to think in metaphors. Life isn't a poem. 

He is half-an-hour late for dinner. The bar he picked has a loud band so you don't talk over food. The two of you split the bill. When you walk to the train station he puts his hand on your waist and his tongue down your throat and it's so much easier to close your eyes than to squirm away with some excuse.

On the way home, he starts sexting you. I love you, you type in response, wonder how it is so much harder to send this. If you added a too to the statement, would he run? 

At home, your father has fixed the heater and you have the first hot shower in months. 

(overcomingalexithymia)

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Cake Solves Everything

After their fight, she heads to the kitchen.   

She is going to make a strawberry shortcake the way he likes it. She knows the drill, after years of marriage. Combine flour, baking powder, sugar, and a sprinkling of salt. The cut strawberries are already sitting in the fridge with another cup of sugar, the juices slowly seeping out of sliced scarlet flesh. 

He prefers his cakes sweeter and richer than the feather-light ones her grandmother had taught her. After his loud and detailed feedback the first time she baked for him, she modified the recipe and started to pour in two extra tablespoons of sugar, used cream cheese instead of whipped vanilla cream between the layers, and bought new pants for him every six months. He never seems to notice that she never eats anything she cooks for him. 

Add shortening, cutting and not stirring it in until the mixture begins to stick into large. Beat eggs and milk in a separate bowl. Pour in and stir. After pouring the batter in a pan and placing it in the oven, she starts on the cream cheese, automatically reaching for another tablespoon of powdered sugar. Her husband likes sweet things. 

As the cake cools on the rack, she takes the string she keeps in her apron. Her grandmother had taught her to use to use it to make clean slices through cakes. Pipe cream cheese in, smoothing it out with the flat edge of a knife. She smothers the cake with powder sugar, does not think of the layers of foundation she smooths on every morning, and sprinkles it with the cut strawberries.  He always did care for appearances. 

The cake she takes to the master bedroom. He is where she had left him; slumped next to the dresser. 

Honey? 

She kneels down next to him (he always did like that) and moves him so he sits upright; takes a forkful of cake and presses it to his lips. 

Open up, it's your favourite. 

Gently at first, then a little harder, with the muscles born from years and years of housework, she coaxes his mouth open with a crack. She pushes the dense cake down his throat, works his stiff jaw to mash the cake, delicately wipes away the cream cheese around his lips with his handkerchief and pushes his mouth back shut. He always did care for appearances. 

Was it good? 

She knows the drill. All he has to do is eat his favourite strawberry shortcake and he will look up and smile at her, and everything will be fine.

Prompt:  Write a poem which is really a recipe. Bonus #1 Include a photo to accompany your “completed dish” Bonus #2 Include a vegan option

(overcomingalexithymia)