Breaking Sad

by Jennifer DeBell

I am bread! I am an avid combination (and twice a week for 35 years, I am a woman). Any less avid a combination is as dangerous as heroin, chocolate, meat, or potato chips, and mustn't be found in the home. So many women I know are running in horror from me. They are also self-conscious around me, humble loaf that I am—believing they fall short of some domestic ideal because they don’t embody my delicious aroma and comforting presence. They even think that as toast, they are less crunchy and buttery than me! When visiting, they often flat-out refuse to squeeze me. Be damned, I say!
Dancing and running and walking and bicycling are life! As is meat, chocolate, and me, bread. A sad day is a day with no appetite, and a sad year is a year with nobody to share myself with. What of jam? And butter, and honey, and ham, and cheese, for that matter? I love the appetite I inspire—the childish dreams of peanut butter and jelly, the sophisticated dinner parties in which I take center stage, that handsome French baker named Xavier who molded me into the avid combination I am…grain, leavening, seeds, even raisins, cherries, and chocolate, oh, Xavier! Oh pardon… that’s another story, ahem.