Accidental Lime
By Abigail Chang

Scoop vanilla with languid strokes,
kissing lip of spoon to velvet surface
pressing slowly through softness into permafrost
pushing deliberately, laboriously toward the sun.
Shape rough spheres of snowy cream,
folded within spoon and dish,
smooth loping hills of milk, sown loosely
with brown crumbs of vanilla bean:
a photo negative of the stars.
Gather spoonfuls of viscous ice
lifting the richness up for sampling,
a taste sweet and familiar and intangible
each swell of white soft and liquid in the mouth—

Oh! A tight, bright,
shot of sherbet lime
Biting, striking, cracking,
Dry lightning in the haze.

The impurity passes
an aurora dissolving into tundra.
Vanilla silks over the disruption,
Polishing all down
to cream and sugar and milk.