Caramel, mango, 
coffee, and raspberry. 
Broken macarons sit 
in a clear plastic box 
on the top shelf of our fridge. 

Cinnamon and vanilla, 
pumpkin and pistachio,
they’re sold for two dollars a piece
at the bakery where Sofia works.
But broken, they are worthless. 

She rises early to ring up 
quiche and almond cakes, 
twists and espresso
at the bakery in the mall. 
Freshman classes are virtual,
so she’s saving up for a car 
and a trip across the country.

The tooth first touches a stiff veil
like the crust over snow at night.
Then chewy meringue surrenders 
into a soft heart
before it melts everywhere. 

An exact degree of humidity is required 
for satiny but strong domes, 
rough but frilly crowns.
The softness of the macaron’s collapse
equal to the precision of its construction.

On the days when Sofia 
comes home, extracting 
from a crinkled white bag
a few broken macarons,
she smiles as if to say, 
What misfortune and what luck.

She adds them to the 
plastic box in the fridge — 
chocolate macarons filled with chocolate ganache, 
lemon with lemon curd buttercream, 
apricot with apricot jam.

“You can each choose one,”
she tells her brothers,
extending the open box to them 
in the middle of their Nerf gun fight 
as if offering bonbons to princes.

Crushed, cracked, or chipped, 
our macarons will never 
surprise a dinner party hostess or
commemorate an anniversary. 

They are eaten with 
grubby hands that have 
just formed snowballs 
from sidewalk slush. 
Popped into mouths between 
handfuls of corn chips 
and streams of potty words.
Appreciated if not for the form,
then for the content: 
“Passionfruit is so good!” Luke says.
“It’s like sweet and sour!”

Macarons were born 
as dollops of almond meringue
in the monasteries of medieval Venice. 
Priest’s bellybuttons 
they were called 
when Catherine de’ Medici 
married King Henry II and
brought them to France.
The Parisians transformed bellybuttons
into three-layer pastry shop tartlets.

When Sofia first mentioned 
macarons, 
I had the vague sense 
that I had missed 
some chic fad.
Perhaps out of rebellion 
for being left out, 
or a lack of respect 
for broken things, 
I ate my first one 
as if it were an ordinary cookie 
that thought very highly of itself.

“I’m grateful for macarons,” 
Diana said one evening
when I tucked her in.
Now I try to eat each one
knowing how hard they were to make,
how delicate and once beautiful.
And how the baker, knowing this too,
keeps making them again and again.