She told him no. He cannot enter and yet he does. He comes in and makes himself at home. Her daughter, the simple-minded one, gave him a key and opened the door.

She wants more. More silence, more solitude, more being left in peace.

Her daughter’s wants, however, are for a man. Maybe any man, but a man who can make her heart sing, her tongue and lips bleed and beg for the sweetness of pudding. It’s what one might wish for their child.

Driving into the long blue night. Saving red for sunrise. Saving herself from all that happened. She stepped on the pedal and motored onwards. The long night was a time for telling old tales, the ones from the shadows, the ones that scare and embolden all at once. She needed stories to protect herself, put words in place of boundaries. Make sure her daughter, the shy one, had a safe place.

Bad enough she still smokes and her daughter, the wise one, moved back home, swiftly followed by Jeremy. A man of large stature but small intelligence, although house-trained, it seems. He does what he’s told, he’s not mean, but really, is that all there is to recommend him?

She can’t say no, it seems. She can’t allow herself to want more. She lets him enter and she’s sorry immediately.

She learned early on to accept her lot, but it’s not a lot. It’s very little and why should she not want more? More for her, more for her daughter. The smoke gets in the way, making her cough, darkening the air, sullying the furniture. If only she could stop. If only she had stopped Jeremy from moving in.

She needs to know how, needs to grow strong and stand up. She sees herself in her daughter, the silly one, and knows she ought to have protected her from the lumbering fool.

Tonight’s pudding is steamed, baked, tasting of sugar, vanilla and cardamom. Her lips smack, her mouth salivates, she waits. He serves and watches while she tastes. She wants to spit it out, to refuse the gift, to make a point, but it is truly delicious and for all his faults, she sees that he can bake. He can make sweetness from very little.

Maybe he’ll be good for her daughter, the canny one. Pretty useless when it comes to organising his life, but at making tea and desserts, he’s a champion. But is that enough? Enough for her daughter, the tiny one, this enormous megalith of a man, standing in her way.

He’s benign for now but too big, that if he changed his mind, he’d be dangerous. She’s always aware. Past experience taught her well.

Thanks for reading!

Looking — really looking — at her naked body. Considering it intently in the mirror. Not the body of dreams or advertising, but very real. With its real wrinkles of flesh, faint furrows in tanned skin, breasts lower and softer than they ever were. Aged and very real.

Her mind goes to cake… in the eye of a storm¹, a phrase from a book she read. Feeding on the sweetness of her ageing, older, beyond-middle-aged body, with its secret places and sharp, sour, even bitter mind. Sexuality. Reality. Coming at it sideways, via cake, via sweetness, via simile and metaphor.

I, me, I want, wanting, yearning for hands to touch these loose soft breasts, tenderly tasting the nectar of deep, secret places, licking the bowl clean. Butter icing and cake mix, in the baking tin, on the spatula, in the bowl. Holding on, hands and tongue, until the last explosive drop.

As we lie back defeated by passions spent and minds that return to cake, as we giggle at what we’ve done after such a long time. The cooling breeze of after-lust makes me want to hold you warm in my arms — feed you sweet honey cake in tiny forkfuls. Let me be your feeder, feed you sweetness on the cusp of danger¹, the edge of disaster, the fragile lip of the world becoming the worst it’s ever been.

Instead, defiant optimism leads me back to your body, your arms, strong yet soft, your open mouth and warm greedy tongue. Not ignoring you now, you have my avid attention. Wholly, hugely, wetly interested in this steamy, intimate exchange. Yes, it will always include cake, the sweetest honey cake I can bake. The tastiest metaphor I can evoke. Delighting in runny honey dripping down our fingers. Come here my sweet, kiss me! I’m ready. I’m not sure, but I want to be ready.

This soft, wrinkled, gentle, older body, no longer taut or pert, yet defiant, not inert — there is still yeast to rise and spill over the rim of the baking tin. Plump, pillowy body surrounding the soul of an ageless, fiery star. Vibrant and spirited, reborn in audacious sensuality, in taste and touch, tentative, teasing, with icing all over my face and your sticky fingers. Coming close, rising, teasing, offering a small delicate spoon of sweet delight, like the leftover sugar grains on a saucer. Cooling too much, the breeze makes me shiver. I need you now to heat me up, eat me up, leave me wanting no more.

Why has it taken so long?

I wasn’t ready and you weren’t there. You’re here now, a furnace of heat, to bake my cake. I don’t care if we burn the pan, set the whole house on fire. Raise me up to your mouth and consume me whole, in the last thirteen seconds of the breaking storm.

¹ “To bake a cake in the eye of a storm; to feed yourself sugar on the cusp of danger.” A line from ‘On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous’, by Ocean Vuong, with much appreciation..

Thanks for reading!