Two little girls come into the bakery with their father this morning. The older sister lingers by the door, using the short water cups we stack by the sugar and salt, to water the flower pot out front. I never noticed we had flowers until now. I can't even tell you what color they are. “Look,” I nudge my coworker, interrupting the story she’s telling me about a cute guy at her night-job—a restaurant nearby. She's the new hostess there. Her eyes are green but also gray but al

A young girl pays for her five-dollar banana bread in dimes and nickels only, and gets her sister to check her math when she’s done. The head baker tells me to throw away the burnt slices of Orange Chocolate Polenta cake into the compost. “Pa’ la basura. . . . Tíralo.” When his back turns, I rescue it, take a paper towel and lift the cake from the grave of coffee grounds, put it in a pastry bag. That night, when I turn it to face me, the inside is bright yellow, moist with bu

July 30 I make cake-pops for the first time. I upturn a delicious loaf of chocolate banana bread into a bowl, mash it with my hands until it resembles play-dough, then roll the moosh between my palms, pressing and rolling evenly, until little dark planets form in my hands. The young girl I'm doing this with is eleven. She wants to crack the eggs into the batter, enjoys watching the slime crawl down the metal bowl's sides so much that I tell her put in three, even though the

When I woke up, I thought it was still July. I thought I was at the bottom of the month's drawer, reaching for a few more things. But it's August now, and I'm at the top of the days again. I'm dizzy from the switch, and I have this feeling I forgot something, someone, but have no time to check. No way to go back. . . . I thought a twig was brushing my forehead in the pool, a tree's hair falling in my face, but it was just my own, thick and stick-like when wet. (Or maybe it w