I can’t say I loved it
because I’ve never had it,
only tried to make the recipe
from his description: the light
batter, the center of raspberry
jam I’m certain, now, was
not store-bought, but made.
Two layers. A sluice of icing
in a thin glaze we’ve never
mastered. The speckling
of pecans. Every year my father
swears we replicated the recipe
for this famous, lost birthday cake,
exactly as our great-grandmother
made it. Every year we know
he’s lying. We plan to try again.