candy store

my last name is syrupy when drizzled on your lips. how do you make me sound so sweet? i don’t want you to be sorry, i want you to undo it all. unweave it. never turn me to powdered sugar, pulverized. you don’t know how to love gently. only know stomping out the sandcastles & crushing bunny rabbits in your palms. kindness evades you much the way the truth has you gripped up & suffocating. you are not the only one who knows honesty. you are not the only one who knows the cellblock between my thighs. i’m locked up, lockjaw, save the turtles, drink your milk. it’s always strawberry. it’s always saccharine, sweet & rotting. i am sweet & rotting. throw me into the chesapeake bay. suck me through the straw. who are you when no one is watching? (someone’s always watching). who are you when your gods turn their backs? how sharp is the knife you keep tucked in your shoe? i never asked the right questions. never turned your aspartame to candy floss. am i chewing gum? salt water taffy? ripped me like candy buttons from paper that never fully peels off. if you had kept me in a glass case, at least i still would have been seen. but you kept me like a butterscotch at the bottom of a grandmother’s purse. i want you to melt on my tongue. i want to be licked, slurped. to be the indulgence, the craved. & i want to nourish. satiate. after they untwisted my intestines as a little girl, i filled whole days drawing pictures of food. deprivation begets obsession. made, not begotten. maybe forgotten. cotton mouthed & burnt caramel. now men i don’t belong to call me baby & i want to be cradled & seen & small. i want to be weak & loved anyway. i don’t want to have my flaws held above me like a mobile. hot flashes. the night goes on. morning is long & i am grateful for daylight. whispers. who am i when no one is watching? (someone is always watching). & i can smell the fudge & the peanut brittle & the short cake. but i smell like skin & i want to shake it off, rinse. let the snaking cleanse. rip the filth from my throat & massacre the part of me that desires externality. wedgies & wedge salads & my head always slung over the toilet seat. i pretend to be healed, but i love the feeling of control, of power. the illusion of lack of weak. the presence of patience & strength. there’s no virtue in the way i hula hoop, in the way you fucked my mouth like nirvana laid at the base. i am too human to be anything but. too american to ever not be a ghoul. asteroids & teddy bears & ice luge. hock the loogie & grind it into the orange dirt. what hurts worse, the softball or the basketball? baseball, duh. i dug a ditch & planted my body & tiger lilies & baby teeth. got milk? got water? got sun & fiber & carbon dioxide? deep breath. air conditioning. i still melt in the heat. still rotting & sweet.