So Sweet Potato Pie
Letha Kyle bakes a sweet potato pie
people line up to buy each holiday,
a pie just the right balance of sugar
and butter, a crust that flakes
to melt in watering mouths.
The recipe, guarded more
than even Letha’s darkest secrets,
is rumored to pre-date the Civil War,
when Indians and buffalo ruled
this part of the country.
She reeled in the town’s confirmed bachelor
with her cooking, but the pie caught him,
married thirty years and counting,
no children, only the twin dachshunds
who eat grilled steaks that fill the house
with seasoned scents Letha and her man
forego cable television to buy.
No one will ever know
that Letha clipped her pie
from The New York Times when she
was twelve and Mama first let her
use the large, gas stove that marked
Letha’s womanhood. Mama proved
the power of femaleness, 90 years
of opening cans with her thick knife
and creating food from dabs, pinches,
tea cups, from the smells of her mixing bowl,
from touch.
Ramona Levacy
April 16, 2015
goodchristianfiction 