Beth Kanter

A moth grayer than I knocked on my apartment door this morning demanding that I bake her a three-tiered Meyer lemon birthday cake topped with aster, mint, rose, milkweed, and vervain. I agreed for I know what it is to crave flowers and frosting on the anniversary of one’s own arrival. So I went to the alley behind my building and whipped, blended, and folded handfuls of dirt and dandelion stems as my grandmother taught me to do long ago. Water from a rusting hose nozzle the recipe’s only binding agent. At the stroke of midnight, I presented the birthday…