Floating from my mind came a memory

of the Entenmanns banana sheet cake

in the box with the little cellophane window on top.

White frosting and light cake,

machine made - a delicious chemical sweetness.

From childhood many years before,

was the last time I held its taste,

the last time I even thought about this cake.

A recollection so long buried,

risen from the murky depths of my experience.

Like an apparition,

I watch the memory of child me and my father.

We dig in with spoons right out of the box,

like hyenas come upon a fresh kill.

My dad and I eat the banana sheet cake

in the morning before anything else,

his shirtless belly hangs over his dungarees,

and I am still wearing my clothes from the day before,

forgetting to pack pajamas for the weekend.

We giggle as we eat, a clump of frosting

clinging to the corner of his mouth.

It is such a delicious sweetness.

This I had forgotten. So much forgotten.

20 years gone since he vanished.

Memories will ebb and diminish.

I tell myself that’s gonna happen. Get over it.

Sadness floods in at my own

acceptance of forgetting.

I panic I am too compliant

he is starting to evaporate,

a life fading from the mind.

But there – right under the surface,

a memory not gone at all,

instead solid and full,

is a big spoonful of delicious

banana sheet cake.