That good light

At almost five o’clock you’re on your way to see your sisters in Brooklyn. You pop into a coffee shop, order a latte, hot and whole.

“No lid and no sleeve,” you tell the barista.

He makes the latte very hot, the machine has probably not been used much in the last hour, and you have to wait a bit before you can carry it out.

You tell the barista: Imagine aliens landing, imagine them saying, “Just pour the coffee into our hands.”

Here you cup your hands to show what you mean, and he laughs.

You think about how much you love to make people laugh, and how freeing it is to use your hands and your body to give your words more weight and clarity. And how what has changed is you, not the world.

Later you pour some of the latte into your sisters’ cups.

“Are you trying to drink less caffeine,” they ask, and you say, “No, I just wanted to share,” and the coffee tastes so much better for having been shared. You’re sitting on the rug around a low table, eating chocolate cake from Brooklyn Larder. The cake: fall-apart-good.

*

Your husband shares a medieval recipe for apple pie.

The recipe calls for good apples, and spices, and a good coffin, by which they mean crust. There are no measurements, no further instructions, you’re just supposed to run with the good apples.

Perhaps if the apples are good enough, nothing else matters.

You bake a plum torte instead.

The next morning there is but a sliver left, you tell your friend.

“I baked one, too!” she says, “But there was none left by morning.”