Dido Bakes a Pie
Elizabeth Vignali
Today, I gathered
the strawberries that
grew wild after you
left. Snipped the runners
running from their beds,
flicked baby slugs from
the underbellies
of serrated leaves,
deposed red berries
from their sprouted crowns.
My fingers stained red.
Too ripe to eat raw,
too flaccid to slice
even with your sword,
strawberries soft and
good only for pulp.
It’s just as well. Pie
for breakfast is one
of the few pleasures
in my loneliness.
I break up the crust,
make it go farther,
add whipped cream to get
the ratio right.
More strawberries wait,
heavy with bruises.
Red wet mouths pressed to
the white Pyrex bowl.
Oven door open.
All the matches struck.
Elizabeth Vignali is an optician and writer in the Pacific Northwest, where she coproduces the Bellingham Kitchen Sessions reading series. She is the author of Object Permanence and coauthor of Your Body A Bullet, forthcoming from Unsolicited Press. Her poems have appeared in Willow Springs, Cincinnati Review, Mid-American Review, Tinderbox, The Literary Review, and others.