Hot Rolls
By Todd Clayton
The night before that Thanksgiving, my mom had already been dead for years and yet there she was, sitting in a bowl on my kitchen counter, looking the same way she always does right after she’s mixed I put a clean kitchen towel over her, tucking her in for the night, then take a picture for my sisters “Hi mom!” I write and in response come more pictures of her Only now she is on my sisters’ counters, in different cloth-covered bowls where, in the night hours, she will consume herself, her yeast eating her sugars until she triples in size and fills our kitchens with a holy tang When I wake to the smell that Thanksgiving Day, I am thirty-four, then twenty-one, then twelve, and finally five, tugging at my mom’s apron as she makes her rolls, begging a piece of the unbaked dough, which she of course gives me In truth, the rolls are not even that good but they are hers and, by some unknown magic, bring her back to me, if only for a moment, if only to remind me that, even if it too short, our time was delicious
Todd Clayton lives in Brooklyn with his husband Dylan.
To Franco Zacha, illustration is the language of the heart. By combining the world he observes with carefully crafted concepts, Franco captures emotions through the lens of solemnity and beauty. His work has been published in the pages of The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic, and has recognized by institutions like the Society of Illustrators and American Illustration. When he is not painting, you may find him relishing the art of old Pokémon cards. Franco is from Buenos Aires, Argentina, and based in Providence, RI.