We Are Baking a Cake

We are baking a cake
and nothing is wrong
I do not have a pit in my stomach

Lina comes in
licks chocolate icing
off the side of your hand
I am unfazed
in fact, the evening is still
entirely ours

you’re wearing your dead mother’s
checkered apron, and we talk
until our words drift into nonsense
until we buckle with laughter

I am not pulled
into your embrace
my pulse hammering against us
as a warning

in the oven
our concoction browns
at the edges, and glistens 
we watch the center solidify
from the tiny window
rooting and cheering
for what we’ve created

what we’ve created
does not destroy us
in fact, it melts on our tongues
with ease.

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Hanna Webster is a reporter for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and a poet. She has an M.A. in Science Writing from Johns Hopkins University and a B.S. from Western Washington University. Her literary work appears in Beyond the Veil Press, Sad Girls Club Lit, Jeopardy Magazine, and elsewhere. In 2022, her poem “Desire as Peach Wine” received the Editor’s Choice Award with Frost Meadow Review. She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.