Sugar High

Lyman Grant

April 16, 2023

Your package arrived with that fragile thing

mostly intact. Even our nation’s neglect

of roads and postal vans could not defeat

your practiced skills with bubble wrap and

packing tape. When I opened the box, I lifted

the luminous clump to the overhead light

and saw inside refracted in layers of plastic

and air, itself a kind of puffed pastry, thinly

epidermal, the giant, still moist, baked good

peering, like an eye, ever open. What can

I say? Frighteningly, it sat on the plate

accusing me with its knowingness, reproaching

me for my every timid refusal of faultless

joy. I devoured it without mercy. Yes, I am

unaccustomed to sweetness tasting so

unapologetic. I moistened my finger, pressed

it upon the final wayward crumbs broken

from the crisp edges and finished it off.

Lyman Grant, an ex-pat Texan living in Virginia, has recently published Symptom and Desire: New and Selected Poems.  He can be found at https://www.4doorlounge.com.