what do i taste like?

on cherries, tequila, and the evidence i arranged first

Aug 07, 2026

at 2:11 in the afternoon, i licked vanilla ice cream in the back of a car because the first photograph looked too much like i was eating vanilla ice cream.

apparently this was a problem.

“again,” zoe(my bestfriend) said.

“it’s melting.”

“that’s helping.”

this is something photographers say when the inconvenience belongs to somebody else.

i brought the cone back to my mouth.

the ice cream had softened around the edge. a white line was moving toward my wrist. i caught it with my tongue just as zoe took the photograph.

the second frame looked nothing like eating.

it looked like appetite.

we kept that one.

i don’t particularly like vanilla.

if nobody is photographing me, i order pistachio.

pistachio, unfortunately, has the complexion of a minor illness.

vanilla understands light.

so i ate vanilla.

by the time we stopped, there was a cold patch on the front of my dress and my fingers were sticky enough that i opened the car door with my wrist.

none of this survived the photograph.

the photograph had excellent boundaries.

the folder on my laptop was called TASTE.

all caps.

i had named it three weeks earlier, which was long enough to forget whether i had been serious.

inside were cherries.

raspberries.

watermelon.

the vanilla cone.

several photographs involving my mouth and decisions i would struggle to defend under oath.

the cherries came next.

two of them, still joined at the stem.

zoe held them out.

“subtle.”

“i haven’t done anything yet.”

“you bought cherries for a photograph about mouths.”

“they were on sale.”

they were not.

i put one against my lower lip.

then both.

i looked into the lens and hated it.

i looked past the camera and liked it.

the cherries photographed beautifully.

dark skin.

a little shine.

my mouth open just enough.

what the photograph did not record was that one of the stems kept going up my nose.

i remain impressed by the camera’s commitment to symbolism.

the raspberry was worse.

against my tongue, it looked soft and almost indecent.

it was so sour that the second the shutter went off i pulled it out and said, “absolutely not.”

zoe laughed.

the photograph remained persuasive.

that bothered me.

not because it was false.

the raspberry really had touched my tongue.

my mouth really had opened.

the camera had simply stopped collecting evidence at a very convenient moment.

we took another set beside the water.

white sheet.

small pale dress.

nothing edible anywhere.

when i opened that photograph later, i stared at it longer than the others.

then i closed it.

i had been hungry when we took it.

i went home and ate toast.

friday night, i wore the little spotted dress to a party.

there was a narrow balcony.

someone had left the door open, so every few minutes cold air moved through the room and reminded everyone they had skin.

he was standing beside the balcony door.

we had met once before, but not sufficiently to know anything useful about each other.

he asked what i had been doing all week.

“photographing food.”

“for work?”

“not exactly.”

“for fun?”

“also not exactly.”

he waited.

“i have a complicated professional structure.”

he laughed.

i liked him more for laughing in the correct place.

this is an embarrassingly low standard and yet many people fail it.

we talked until the room became louder around us without either of us becoming louder with it.

at some point his hand arrived at my waist.

not possessively.

more like he had put it there to see whether the sentence continued.

i let it.

when he kissed me, my mouth still tasted faintly of tequila.

his tasted of lime.

not strongly.

just enough that afterward i checked my own mouth with my tongue, as though there might be some useful exchange rate.

his thumb stayed at the corner of my lip.

i thought about the photographs.

the cherries.

the raspberry.

the vanilla.

then, because dignity is apparently something i prefer to observe in other women, i asked: