by Sarah Rosenthal

My guilt was the stone pit at my overripe center. All I wanted was all of the salted peanut butter in the jar crammed in my mouth by way of something, anything, to feel so full maybe I wouldn’t need to randomly wake up at night feeling so empty I mistook the feeling for hunger, wouldn’t think of my friends’ pitying looks, their condolences slick as an old bottle of olive oil.

The pink lady apple skins shone like candy, sliced crescents glowing pink from the skin, growing whiter in the middle, sweet as the last vestiges of summer warmth on my tongue but tart as the cool breeze blowing in from the north. I had picked several to buy at the farmer’s market, placed them carefully in my cart like treasure. Now they sat on my counter, half-moons ceremoniously waiting on a plate in a circle, ready to be cloaked with knightly peanut butter.

I was my own gastronomical cartographer, creator and carver of salted topography—nut butter riverbeds nestled in celery, tiny mountain peaks formed on sliced banana coins, oversized glaciers balancing precariously on spoons that fed the ever-hungry black hole of my mouth. I was not heartbroken, I was not even a conqueror, merely an insatiable creator plumbing the depths of her hunger. In this bite of sweet apple and salty nuts, satiation sang divine.

Sarah Rosenthal works in advertising by day and writes by night. Her work has been featured on The Toast, SpliceLit, and I Want You To See This Before I Leave Zine, where she was the featured author in the December 2014 issue. She lives in Brooklyn by way of Connecticut.