Author: Zachary A. Martz

There’s a certain kind of summer quiet that settles in after the first round of food, when paper plates stack up and the air smells like grass and warm asphalt. Someone brings out dessert and the day narrows to a small, perfect scene: a slice of blueberry pie, its filling dark and glossy, and a smooth scoop of vanilla ice cream beginning to soften at the edges.

“Protect Your Pie” started as a joke, the kind you say when you’ve been outside long enough to feel the sun in your shoulders and you’re a little too happy about what’s on the table. But it’s also true in the ordinary way true things are—because there’s always that moment when you set your plate down, turn your head, and realize how quickly the good parts of a day can disappear.

The pie tastes like bursts of late spring and early summer, sweet and sharp, held together by a crust that breaks the way it should. The ice cream cools it down, slows everything, makes you pay attention. It’s not complicated food, but it carries memory well, like certain houses do—holding a season inside of it.

So you hover a little. You guard your fork. You take the next bite before it melts too far, before someone asks for “just a taste,” before the afternoon shifts into evening.

Some things don’t need to last forever to matter. Sometimes you just need to keep them close long enough to finish what you came for.