​Ash Bowen
​

Cooking for One

I measured how much of you was left
each time I stepped onto the scale, my weight

170, one-tenth of which I ledgered to your ghost.
For years, I bargained to bring you back, conjured you

with champagne and prosciutto to feel your presence
all around me. Each time I baked a cake and fingered

your name into the frosting, I felt as if I’d gone
to church but left before redemption rose to take me.

I confess: I used a Ouija board. I was gluttonous.
I piped your likeness onto petit fours. I assembled your temple

with stacks of chocolate wrappers, my rotten enamel
the outcome of my prayers. The Bible lists the Deadly Sins

but never what we’ll see after something irreversible
has happened. Heart disease, hardening of the arteries.

Only when I gave up sugar did I starve you from returning.
Those last seventeen pounds, so hard to shed, and Hell,

​an oven of my own lighting, crème brûlée, walls rich with icing.

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Ash Bowen is the author of two books, the most recent, Other Edens, was the winner of the 2025 Vassar Miller Prize. The other, The Even Years of Marriage, was the winner of the 2012 Orphic Prize.