Once upon a time, there was a cake that was not just a cake
It was the cocoa powder, dark and bitter earth
that once was seed, fruit, promise
It was the butter, golden fat, almost alive
melting under touch, like fear or desire
It was the sugar, sweet and cruel
dissolving into itself
like memories that refuse to be remembered

The eggs are cracked, fragile shells of worlds
and from them flows the liquid gold
the beginning of everything
Mix. Knead
The batter is sticky, resistant
like life that insists on being lived

The oven heats
Inside, the cake rises
swollen with hot air
like a heart before tears
And the smell, ah, the smell
It is the scent of what is to come
of what has been
of what will never be

When it is ready
when the fork cuts the first slice
there is silence
The cake is devoured
and with it
time is devoured too

And in the end
only the empty plate remains
and the certainty that
for a moment
we were all one:
the cake, me
and the mystery of existence