Confections

Confections

Looking back, I see how perishable it all was. Him wearing a pinstripe suit, the scent of cacao beans light on his skin as he drove across state lines, elbow jutting out an open window, a Camel unfiltered dragging its trail of ash.

My husband sold chocolate, semi-sweet, milk and white—sampling discs the shape of communion wafers from the trunk of his olive green Taurus.

I melted down the ten-pound slabs he left on our yellow-tiled counter, distilled the potion into soufflé light as fog, thin-skinned decadence, mousse that shivered to the touch.

City-to-city he made the sale, a pusher of ancient remedies.

They did not recognize him as the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, torn from paradise for shepherding cacao to earth. Nor as a Mayan trader espousing—as they once did—“10 beans for a chicken, 50 beans for a woman”.

And so, he slept with the candy store owner in Lake Falls, Michigan, the ice cream maker in Topeka, Kansas, the baker in Fresno, California—all nubile, fresh, unfettered.      

Later, when I learned of his dalliances, I packed my bag— all the while imagining—How could I not?—each ganache-filled truffle, each pink-rimmed raspberry cream.

—Comstock Review, Vol 31.2