I made the cake anyway

Yesterday was Hen’s twenty-fifth birthday.
Except it wasn’t. Because he’s not here.
Except it was. Because I am.

I don’t like time. It’s a mean dog sometimes. It pants and drools and nips at you when you’re already trying to hold a bowl of soup steady.
Yesterday was heavy with would have.
That little phrase, all dressed up in politeness, like it’s not holding a shiv.
Hen would have been twenty-five.
Don’t say that. Say nothing. Or say,
“Time doesn’t know what it’s doing.”

I never know what to do on the day. I can’t do nothing. But nothing feels real.
Do I pretend he’s here?
Do I pretend he’s not?
Both are costumes that don’t fit.

But this year, my hands knew.
They marched me to the kitchen like tiny soldiers with a secret.
They pointed to a recipe with passionfruit in it.
They whispered: Make something ridiculous.
So I did.

I made curd. Two kinds.
Lime, bright and tart like the part of me that still screams.
Passionfruit, soft and golden like what’s left when the scream dies down.

I whipped meringue by hand, which is a spell and also a tantrum.
I piled sugar into peaks like it mattered.
Like he could see them.
Like the architecture of my grief could be frosting.

Then I torched it.
Because even sweetness deserves a little burn.
The peaks blushed like they were embarrassed by how pretty they turned out.
Or maybe like they missed him too.

He wouldn’t eat this cake.
He wouldn’t see it.
But I made it anyway.
Because my mouth still can’t say
I miss you the way my hands can.

I didn’t light a candle, but I made a wish with my whole body.
The kind of wish that breaks your teeth if you try to speak it out loud.
Not I hope he’s okay.
Not I wish he were here.
Just this:
Hen, did you see? I built the day around you.

Earlier I played his voice back to myself like a spell.
Voice notes lined up like beads.
He was always talking.
About boys.
About Felicity.
About Taylor Swift.
About anything that let him throw glitter on his big heart and toss it in the air.

I know where the laughs go.
I know where I’ll cry.
And I press play anyway, because he was once real in my phone.
He still is, in there.
He still makes me laugh.

I don’t know where people go.
I don’t know if Hen is hanging out on a cloud with a perfect view of me whisking like a maniac.
But I do know this:
Love doesn’t die.
It just changes shape.

Sometimes into cake.
Sometimes into flame.
Sometimes into a girl standing alone in her kitchen,
talking to a ghost who used to send her voice notes at 2 a.m.
just to say he loved her.

And if love has to go somewhere,
I want mine to go to him.
Even now.
Especially now.
Even if it just gets there as a scent—
burnt sugar, bright lime, something trying very hard not to be broken.

I hope he tasted it.
I made it for him.