'Jelly' by Didi Wood

At thirty-nine, you increase the frequency of your hair appointments to every eight weeks. You have to do something. Your eggs are screaming for fertilization and there’s not a man in sight.

You don’t count Eric from IT, who brings donuts to the office on Fridays. He’ll place a jelly carefully on a napkin at the edge of your desk, then silently bow away, palms pressed together, a supplicant bent on appeasing an exceptionally bitchy god.

Every Friday, every single goddamn Friday, he performs this little ritual. You shouldn’t eat it, not if you’re not interested in him (and you’re not), but you do, teeth breaking through the crystalline crust to the dough beneath, and then, in the second or third or fourth bite, comes the burst of jelly on your tongue. How can jelly in a jelly donut be such a revelation? Yet it is, every single fucking time.