1
You bite into the strawberry, and it practically falls apart in your mouth it's so juicy and succulent. You love the texture of the seeds against your tongue, and the smoothness of the inside. To you, strawberries always tastes of summer and the colour red. Unlike the grape you eat next, your teeth bursting the skin, uncovering the slimy insides. Grapes taste of wine and visits to foreign countries, and you delight in the contrast the strawberry you have just eaten. You made the right decision in not choosing cranberries. They are a constant craving, unique with their sharp and tangy flavour when you bite into them, but they wouldn't have fit in here, surrounded by foods you associate with peacefulness and relaxing in the summer sun.
Your hand nudges your glass, and the coolness is refreshing on a day where the sun seems relentless, and you would gladly welcome a gentle breeze to tousle your hair. You take a sip, the carbon dioxide bubbling on your tongue, making your nose tingle, matching how your head tingled earlier, when your brain must have been producing endorphines at a near impossible rate.
The berries and the champagne and the canapes dotted around the place are merely a warm-up, designed to tickle the tastebuds, but not fully sate them. To leave them begging for more. The main event is on the plate in front of you.
Traditionally it should be fruit cake, but to you it tastes dry and crumbly, and the wrinkled texture of raisins always strikes you as wrong. And you don't want to ruin this day in this manner. You feel slow, soft circles, from a calloused yet gentle fingers on your spare hand, as you carefully fork some. The sponge is light and airy, the kind which reminds you of your rose-tinted childhood, and parties in the garden. The simple yet heavenly taste of vanilla is the one you have had so many times, but never tire off. Vanilla is the scent of the candle that burns in your room, and the tea that you drink with your mother, and it always astounds you that it originates from a thin, shrivelled stick, kept the side drawer you used to ignore when scrouging for a snack. The icing is what really takes your breath away, and shuts out the voice next to you.
You don't know how people can tell you white is the colour of nothing when it tastes this good. The overwhelming sugaryness of something you know will do nothing for you health, but you can't pass it up either. The icing dissolves in your mouth, only the lingering taste to prove it was there. Coloured icing doesn't taste the same a white icing. White icing tastes pure, and coloured icing tastes different and not different, both at the same time. It shouldn't make sense but it does.
But at lot of things don't make sense. Like how you can know the world intimately, but still not know what it looks like.
