Home alone.
I bake to distract myself from thinking too much.
I'm leaning away from a *** of bubbling oil,
trying to fry cake doughnuts
for my Great Grandmother,
The great cook of the family
who loved to make them back in South Dakota
for the guests in the little hotel she owned with my great grandfather.

We didn't have enough oil.
And the misshapen rings begin to burn.
I bat them, annoyed, with a spoon.
Somewhere, in such a mundane moment,
the sadness rises, unexpected.
I think of last summer.
And dissolve into tears.
I have never felt so alone.