the ugly cake
sometimes the sweetest things don’t leave
they settle
like sugar dissolved into something unseen
lodging themselves where touch cannot reach
you don’t notice at first
you only remember the ease of it
the way it asked nothing of you
the way you didn’t hesitate
and then
it begins to turn
not into pain
not yet
just a quiet insistence
a slow, gathering pressure
something tender becoming difficult to hold
you return to it instinctively
that same brightness
rolling it across your mind
like something you’re still allowed to keep
even as it deepens
even as it alters
it’s never the ending that ruins you
it’s the after
the way sweetness lingers
long past its welcome
long enough to harden into an ache
how something once weightless
learns the architecture of your body
settles into it
refuses to dissolve
and you
you let it stay
as if gentleness could undo what it has become
but it only presses further
until even the memory of happiness
feels like a fault line
something delicate
that gave way beneath you
and still
you crave it
that same fleeting sweetness
even now
when it rests inside you
like something ruined by its own warmth
aching
exactly where it once felt the most alive.