Delectable Woman: Serves One

Author photo

By Lauren Wilson

Preheat body through fourteen school years coming home sunburnt 

after annual sports days on shadeless fields. Pour your time into 

cupped hands until overflowing. Keep as many secrets inside

as possible. Leave yourself in the oven too long. Lose track of time 

scrolling on social media. Stir in shame until you can’t look in a mirror. 

Cover up indecently desirable flesh. Get called sweetheart, sugar, honey 

by men you won’t meet again. Become a crystalline interlocutor. Melt 

gently in his mouth and dissolve upon the ridge of front teeth. Wonder

if they taste sweetness on your skin. Stir in sugar and add a tablespoon 

of honey. Bake a cake you won’t be able to swallow. Smooth lipstick 

round the edges of your lips with a palette knife. Whisk sugar and butter

into icing for your father’s birthday cake until your wrist is warped 

for the rest of the afternoon. Peel away that second skin you started

wearing so long ago you no longer know where the sweet smiles end 

and you begin. Uncover angles no one else sees. Sit in your own 

stillness occasionally. Count each inhale, exhale. Alive, breathing, beautiful, 

before anyone altered the word from adjective to objective. Taste your hidden 

sweetness. Grate a little extra self-love to decorate.

Lauren Winson is a daydreamer, student and poet from the UK. Her lyric poetry explores chronic illnesses, the body and queerness. She can also be found blogging about books at https://thoughtenchantedsilence.wordpress.com