Buttercream

As a child, I take silky white icing on my spreader and press it onto a yellow round of cake. I dig into the surface, dragging the smooth topping into it, shredding it to granules. The cake crumbles with white, growing milky and dirtier. The spreader's wounds edge deeper as I try to fix the mess.

My mother asks for the spreader and, with strong arms, moves the icing over the crumbs like a foamy sea tide caught in time over the surf, stilled. The crisp white waves of the icing emulate this flowing. They hide the jagged marks and chunks I've carved.

*

It's all about the buttercream. It's the 10x sugar and the whipped butter cut smooth into each other's bodies until they are one flesh, melting on tongues and slipping down throats. Heavy cream bathes them, seeping in like a secret remedy or an old wives' tale. One tablespoon of Mexican vanilla swishes, two times the natural strength. Buttercream is sweet and not too sweet. Creamy and light. Edible in spoonfuls.

*

The Wal-mart cake supplies hide behind the party favors and greeting cards. I'm aching, so it's the first place a stop in the store. I go over the tools in my mind. The piping paper. The mouths of the icing tips, ridged in different designs. They do not have the the flower nail my mother blooms roses on. Its top is smooth and round like a half dollar; the bottom is a thick pin. She grows them from the inside, overlaying pink cream petals. She scrapes them, gently, from the half dollar and places them on the cake.

She acts like God did in Eden, churning up nature's matter, pure and soft, and piping the garden out as icing. He laid buttercream in the fields: sweet and plump, the blooms of spring.

Beekeeping

Shannon and I share a piece of honeycomb in her kitchen. She has received it from a friend, who owns two small hives.

"As you eat it, the comb will clump together in your mouth. This is what they make beeswax candles from," she tells me, as she takes a chunk of comb in hand and places it on her tongue.

I take a piece in my mouth quickly, with sticky hands. As soon as the complex structure of the comb is broken down by saliva, honey spills into my mouth. It is formless and sweet, swilling into my jaw and overlaying the roof of my mouth. The comb moves together as I chew, balling up on its own.

Shannon has sent some of this home with me, and you are welcome to try some. It's sweeter than other honey you've had before.

Beekeeping fascinates me--the delicate and cruel nature of holding something captive and being gentle with it, because you know that, in great quantities, it can hurt you. Bees are given the illusion of freedom. Here, little bee. This is your home. It's a pretend tree where you will make your honey and feed your larvae. Your queen is here, so you must stay.

The bees drift into sleep and haze when the beekeeper lifts the frame from the hive, smoke filtering through their trachea.

Do we hold bees captive, all of us? When I write about my own sorrow, I hold it away from my body. I live with the illusion that I have overcome all the bees in my box. I pump smoke into my writer's hands until I am numb, hoping one day sweetness will come of this.

The taste of honey depends on which flowers a bee flies to. I imagine wild bees' honey tangier and richer, simply because they choose their own nectar. A beekeeper decides if the honey will be of clovers or apple trees. If I let my sorrow take flight on its own, moving through me at its own pace, will this honey be sweeter? A wild bee flies his own way.