G-Bread

One of my indulgences was going to the Gingerbread House some evenings, sitting gingerly in a little gingerbread chair to eat the best g-bread. For saturation and when I could splurge the money. I felt him, one day, peeking in the sugar-frosted windows but of course he did not come in.

Perhaps he was intimidated by how intimate the place is. Too small to sit comfortably really. Or maybe by how good I smelled in it, the spice sweat-sauna ripened me as a brown paper bag will sweeten out the mealiest pear.

On religious days, of which there are many but few for me, I went to the Temple of the Three Mouths. I fed all three what they were hungry for, which took some guesswork and often-sketchy improvisations. Whatever the three mouths requested became a kind of omen for me.

Mouth One, the mouth of physicality, was the easiest. Once, it wanted peanut sauce, which made sense because it likes protein and viscosity, form and content. Mouth two twice puzzled me, once wanting a blue video and once wanting to lick my arm!

This being the mouth of love I wondered why it wanted such silly forms of it and could only guess that I came to it with deformed notions and therefore could only offer it debased versions of what I most wanted. Still, it made me sad.

The third mouth I gave whatever I could barely keep from gobbling up myself. Chocolate tomatoes and books I couldn’t sleep for. Oils and petals and commotions I dreamt of on my luckiest nights. And the mouth would have none of it. I was refused every time. The mouth of abandonment.

I thought this mouth meant something and then that something was inverse. I was always baffled. Until I could penetrate the mystery, make the third mouth desire what I have to give, I would continue my supplications at the Temple.

My religious days were generally those days when my own company turned against me, when I couldn’t stand myself a minute longer. What my visits to the Temple did to assuage this in-skin repulsion I don’t know—and it only half-works. It was a form of religion after all.

But, after I returned home, I felt a little relief, a snake in the middle of its shedding, knowing there was still this cylinder of self left.