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by Sarah Freligh
For months they bumped butts, unavoidable outcome of their back-to-backness and the proximity of their tiny islands in the vast tangerine sea of the crowded kitchen. Her: cleavers and handsaws and rare roast beef. Him: tarts studded with berries, snow of confectioner’s sugar. Mentally, they ranked each other—the yeast of her loaves, the prime cut of his. On Valentine’s Day, he baked her a chocolate cake oozing a lava of ganache and promised her a lifetime of sweetness. I do, she said, even as she imagined the hard hands of the new sous chef fingering the blade of her favorite knife.
Sarah Freligh is the author of seven books, including Sad Math, winner of the 2014 Moon City Press Poetry Prize, Hereafter, winner of the 2024 Bath Novella-in-Flash contest and Other Emergencies, forthcoming from Moon City Press in February 2025. Among her awards are poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Saltonstall Foundation.
