Monday, August 19, 2019

pink-icing cupcakes

pink is the color of cupcake icing
neither strawberry-flavored
nor raspberry
something in the almost-cherry family
but not quite cherry

pink is the color of cupcake icing
that doesn't taste like anything real

my mother never bought
pink-icing cupcakes
and she never made them herself

that would require
a working relationship with an oven

(and an oven
that worked)

but in any case
she wouldn't buy
pink-icing cupcakes
for my birthday
or my sister's birthday

because she had an aversion
to the color pink

it wasn't a pre-feminist thing
it’s just that she had certain likes
and certain dislikes

and she disliked colorful colors

my mother liked brown
any shade of brown —
taupe    sand    sienna    bark
chestnut    tan    almond    camel
coffee

if it was brown
my mother approved

so we would have had chocolate-icing cupcakes
if we were having cupcakes

but we never had cupcakes

we had cheesecake ….

…. from the deli