She uses a plastic knife that came with her Chinese food.  She

            hates

            using

            chopsticks.

            And the serrated plastic edge is dull.  So when she pulls the stupid pie out of its bright plastic cradle stickered with “reduced fat” and “may help reduce the risk of heart disease” and such.  And the crust is chewy and the top isn’t coloured golden graham-cracker and honey but greyish brown and too stiff and rubbery beneath the thin plastic wrapping, and she pulls that off too—or tries but ends up having to get a pair of scissors almost as dull as the knife but at least with the life and vibrancies of metal.

            And the stupid bright red orbs like deflated Christmas ornaments in their thick syrupy sauce like the pie crust is bleeding when the knife finally breaks the surface—

            “and now to perform the operation”

            she snickers almost

            “scalpel” she orders.

            Giggles.  Stop the giggles.  She didn’t really want to giggle, hated the word giggle, turned the giggle into a snicker which is more malicious but less juvenile.

            And she saws through the top of the pie and laughing at those stupid artificial cherries.  They’re funnier than anything.  And better—they taste better than real cherries.  Surely, surely they aren’t made of real fruit they look nothing like it.

            And she reaches the cherries and their sticky preserve and here the world is uncertain and there’s no firm support and no set path through the sea of red and she tries her best to guide her dull but pure messiah through the water and to the firm sea-bottom—

            And she realizes that the sea bottom is like the horizon and the beginning is so similar to the end and “déjà vu”—she finds herself sawing through stupid crust again—

            And she realizes that she’s coming to the end—

            But now she has accepted it and she realizes as she sees the silver aluminum that it wasn’t “the journey matters more than the destination”, but rather at some point whether you’ve made a journey to discover that everything ends and eventually you’re done slicing the pie or not, just some point at seventy or so when you’re just that age you suddenly get a hankering for the taste of the artificial cherries and chewy grey crust.  So the slicing holds no appeal.  And you want pie so badly and realize that the pie needs to be eaten and there’s no need to delay the slicing anymore.

            But she is still scared because she realizes she doesn’t want pie yet—

            And—delightedly—she discovers that she can’t get a slice of life without cutting another slit.  So she cleans the plastic knife and forgets about Chinese takeout and focuses on pie and making her slit straight and beautiful and refusing to make the mistakes she made on the first—

            --the inevitable mistakes—

            --but less so, now—

            And when she looked down at her wrists and saw the twin slices she felt something salty and hot carving a course down her cheek and wished that it really had been pie.