The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

by Aimee Bender

My father usually agreed with her requests, because stamped in his two-footed stance and jaw was the word Provider, and he loved her the way a bird-watcher’s heart leaps when he hears the call of the roseate spoonbill, a fluffy pink wader, calling its lilting coo-coo from the mangroves.

our changes in height remained unmarked on the door frames, so we grew tall on our own without proof.

We hit the sidewalk, and dropped hands. How I wished, right then, that the whole world was a street.