Sugar

by Mia Ballard

She was the kind of friend who didn’t need to fill silences, her presence alone was enough.

There's this thing about descent—it's quiet, almost imperceptible, like the slow fade of sunlight at dusk, until you're standing in the dark wondering where the day went.

After burying my beloved Dean underneath the lemon tree in our backyard, I did the only reasonable thing left: I bake a cake.

Love, for all its beauty, is fragile. It can slip through your fingers or be buried under the lemon tree in your backyard.

I wasn’t a murderer—I was just a woman wronged.

we love an unhinged queen✨

Losing your mother means losing the person who gave you life, who formed the core of your world. For all her faults, for all the hurt and confusion, she was still my mother. She was the one who held me as a child, who kissed my scraped knees, who once knew me better than I knew myself.