After so many years, you don’t have
to follow a formula. Folding a fitted sheet
becomes balancing adjacent angles,
just like in 8th grade

geometry, easy as pi, rote. A chore
put off till later, replaced
like your 9th grade
boyfriend: all braces

and blonde hair, side swept—
an unconscious swoosh.
Until he shifts his affections
to the long distance runner, crosses out your name

—a simple substitution:
college algebra. Ex equals
fewer hours spent making meals, shaping squared notes
of eight and a half by eleven,

plotting excuses and estimates, rounded
until you’re above average,
the redundancy of doing your nails
and vacuuming and sleeping

alone—a perfect number.
The remainders of recipes
are primed to complement a dusty palate
and divided into servings for one.

Cecilia Savala is a student at the University of Central Missouri where she is majoring in English Education and creative writing and serves as the Editor in Chief of Arcade Magazine. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Pleiades, Barrelhouse, and The Boiler Journal, among others.