Bagel

I no longer feel like myself. But I'm fine with that.

Once, I was a formless mound of dough. In my formative years, I was kneaded gently, and later on beaten, often cruelly. It wasn't an easy life, for the most part, but no life worthy of note ever is. Those days seem like an eon ago now; and while I'm pretty sure they were hell at the time, I still look back on them fondly.

This isn't a metaphor.

Eventually I was molded. Crudely by some standards, handsomely by others. The end result was probably a mixture of both, like a pretty girl with a snaggletooth. The ingredients were there, but all it takes is a snowflake to start an avalanche, and in my case a strand of hair, black, spoiled me. Nobody wanted me.

I was tossed aside. I became bitter and lonely. What was I? I was made for something, I thought, believed, but what?

I wanted to play the piano in front of a sell-out audience at Rockefeller Plaza, to make the game-winning basket in the NCAA Final. Yet there I was, growing stale in a bin of day-olds while ladies with eyes as big as Death Stars looked down upon me and evaluated me pitiful.

I was nothing. My shelf life was over, or so I thought.

As unbelievable as it sounds, a German woman took me home with her. I don't know what she saw in me, but I'm grateful. To this day, the memory of her smile makes me happy. She drove a blue Volkswagen. I rode shotgun, in a brown paper bag.

Have you ever been cut in half, friends? The very idea used to terrify me immeasurably, but it's not so bad. It hurts a little at first, but after you've come to terms with your current state, you actually feel more whole than you did before.

This life has been an abundant one. As I sit shrouded in cling wrap in Mrs. Zurbrück's refrigerator -- top crisper, next to a desirable head of lettuce who must by now detest my yarns yet still nods approvingly at every pause -- I am calm. I'm separated from my lower half by a slice of tomato, a slice of processed cheese, and what smells like horseradish.

And I'm happy. Because tomorrow I will be eaten. Kindly.