How Not to Make a Lemon Souffle

I had extra eggs so I was going to bake a lemon souffle. But first I had to do a magic trick for the kids with a copper tube and a paint lid, switching hands and spinning three times. Our laughing woke the toddler midnap so I spent twenty minutes getting him back down.

The souffle recipe on page 740 referred me to page 739 to read about preparing souffle dishes which referred me to page 238 for souffle options which referred me to page 220 for the photo of the ovenproof baking dish. The kids finished stirring their unsupervised cobbler with its pinches of poppy, sunflower, and sesame seeds and hunks of melting anonymous berries oozing purple into batter the consistency of peanut butter. Hunting for a suitable dish for my souffle, passing the fruit bowl, I notice there’s only one lemon, puckered at both ends, on its way to leather, its molding belly anchoring a rejection from ZYZZYVA.

The toddler trundles down the staircase crying while the cobbler darkens in the oven. At the very back of the cupboard I find the Chessmans and dole out the seven cookies the raccoons didn’t get to when they pilfered from the tea tray I forgot on the deck last night by accident. Milk skin floats intact on both Elizabeth’s cup and mine (left over Earl from our writing meeting in the cabin), The Book of Questions on my desk, a harvest of light from the mind of Neruda (finished not long before he died, translated by William O’Daly) opening with: “Which yellow bird/fills its nest with lemons?”