The Last Slice

A velvet-heavy, honey-spiced cake sat on a table spread vast. soft enough for fingers to disappear into, dense enough to still even the most restless tongues. Its candles flickered like stars. No one asked who baked it. No one wondered how long the oven stayed warm. They just took— with knives that glinted like treaties, with fingers that didn’t wait for plates. Frosting smeared like territory lines, plums dug out and hoarded, their hands sticky with inheritance. Someone wanted the cherry— another, the coast of caramel. Of course, they sang Happy Humanity to us, clinking forks like medals, smiling with mouths still full, declaring the feast a triumph without once glancing at the crumbs beneath the table. The table itself is now a battlefield of crusts and claims. And the last slice sits on the chipped porcelain.