Publication: Icing

She’d had a cupcake for breakfast every day for the last month. Thick on the icing, more often than not with sprinkles, occasionally filled with sweet cream or more icing. […]

via “Icing” by Melissa Bobe — The Metaworker

I am so happy to have my story “Icing” featured on The Metaworker just in time for the week of love! It’s full of feelings, food, and the color pink, and while not exactly a love story, I’ve got a lot of affection for it.

This particular story has been looking for a home for a few years now. I noticed that a lot of the journals that didn’t care for it were run by folks that perhaps the story wasn’t written for. Unlike some other things I’ve written, I think “Icing” has a very particular audience in mind (one that has been through the trenches of Tinder, the stresses of student debt, and the realities of juggling three or more jobs). I was drawn to The Metaworker because they proclaim to be a literary magazine “created by millennials, for millennials,” and as I reflected on the story, I thought: who else was I writing for here if not my peers?

While the story was inspired by a break-up that is now far behind me, I think what has stayed with me is the protagonist’s fixation on food. If you ask anyone who’s ever come to a party I’ve cooked for, they’ll tell you: I definitely have a food fixation myself! And I think that what we intake, the things we consume, the things that nourish and sometimes harm us that are a reoccurring part of every day we spend—all of that has a real, resonant impact on how we understand ourselves. And that’s what stays with me most of all as I look back on this fiction.

Thank you very much for reading my pink story on this Valentine’s week! And till next time, I wish you delicious cupcakes and relationships that end a little better than the one in the story (if they have to end at all),
Melissa