Wonder Bread/Sourdough

Last month
someone told me,
"You know, Zoe,
you're not a very nice girl."
I asked for more information.
It was quite a terrible accusation.
They said I wasn't unkind.
I wasn't unpleasant.
I wasn't untrue.
I just wasn't a nice girl.
It struck a chord in me because
I've spent my whole life trying to be nice,
the Wonder Bread of a woman
Soft
Sweet
Dull
Unpleasant when paired with lettuce.
I don't want to be forgettable, but certainly not someone to be remembered.
And it turned out, I was a complete failure.
I've failed at a lot of things in my life.
Basketball, softball, soccer, tennis, consistency with book clubs, knitting, interpretive dance, ventriloquism, a promising career in scones.
But a failure to complete the basic tenets of womanhood was not on my 2023 bingo card.
“Too” was the word he used to sum it up.
I was too loud, bossy, weak, emotional, robotic, closed-off, opened up, straightforward, convoluted, hilarious, terrifying.
Too too.
I was the sourdough of a woman,
left in a glass jar for far too long to ferment my own thoughts.
Strong
Acrid
A scrap of something a stern but loving orphanage matron would give the youngest child to gum on.
I was not Wonder Bread.
At first, this was hard to swallow.
Like sourdough,
it got stuck in my throat, I couldn't breathe, couldn't move, couldn't taste anything but my own spirit clenched between my teeth.
But eventually it wiggled its way down my esophagus and into my belly to be stomached, dissolved, broken apart.
Once I noticed the sourdough, it was impossible to ignore –
the cackles that bubbled out of my mouth where there once were amused sighs and gentle chuckles,
the snorts and retorts meant to draw no fire from Wonder Bread, now a reason to light my cracked-shell mortar.
And slowly, I became fine with not being Wonder Bread.
I didn't miss my bleached white flour, my scalding steam baths, the anonymity of an assembly line, how the bread package wound too tightly around my waist, but I squeezed in because that's what Wonder Bread does.
The feeling that there is always a tag, always an expiration date looming somewhere above my head, stamped by someone ready to bite.
I have a shelf life now.
I've grown a crust, a ridge of split spikes growing from my spine.
I'm hard, tangy, pointed.
I go great with lettuce.
I'm sourdough.
 

ZoeBee

VT

18 years old

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