Cinnamon and Toast

Splinters: Page 5

I found old diaries from when I was thirteen—
fragments of a girl trying to survive her own story.
Sea Salt & Silence grew from those pages. A series that gives her voice back,
told through a fictionalized version of me.

Each post shares a page from her diary, followed by my reflections now—
piecing together what I once tried to forget.

New here? → Start from the beginning

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June 19, 1991

He let me sleep in.
Didn’t yell.
Didn’t bang pots like war drums.

When I walked into the kitchen,
he was already at the stove.
Butter melting in a cast iron pan.
Bread stacked like playing cards.

“Sit dear,” he said.
And I did.

He poured cinnamon sugar from an old teacup—
the one with the chipped rim, the one my mother hated
he stirred it slow, like he had nowhere to be.

“Don’t upset your mother today,”
he said, without looking at me.
“Don’t give her a reason.”

I nodded.
Swallowed the knot in my throat.
Watched the way he made the toast:
buttered all the way to the edges,
cinnamon thick as dust on a shelf.
Like he was making it count.
Like sweetness could undo sadness.

He slid the plate toward me.
Smiled.
Sipped his coffee
and stared out the window
like maybe he wanted to disappear
but couldn’t quite manage it yet.

I ate slow.
Careful.
Pretending the kitchen wasn’t a minefield.
Pretending toast was enough to make it feel
like we were a real family.

For fifteen minutes,
we weren’t broken.
We weren’t sad.
We were just
two people
sharing silence
and cinnamon.

---

Afterword • July 18, 2025

I’ve clung to that morning
more than I probably should.

It wasn’t some grand act of love—
it came wrapped in warning.
In that tired voice:
Don’t give her a reason.
Like it was my job to hold her storms at bay.

Still,
he buttered the toast to the edges.
He sat with me.
He tried.

And when you grow up in a house
where love is rationed,
you learn to feast on crumbs.

My dad had demons,
and most days,
they danced in the bottom of a beer bottle,
but that morning,
he set the bottle down
and made toast.

Not every day was a wound in that house
Some days,
there was cinnamon.

And even now,
that glimmer still flickers
a burnt-sugar memory
I never quite stopped tasting.

---

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This is part of “Sea Salt & Silence,” a true-to-memory Substack series told through verse, memory, and reflection. I’ll be sharing each diary entry one page at a ti

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More soon.

Debra 💕

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