Monday, March 14, 2011

Bitter Truths

When I was little, I tasted baker's chocolate.
I snatched it up greedily,
with stubby, sticky fingers
and devoured it whole,
before realizing, with a gag,
that it was nothing like the chocolate I had known before.
It was bitter, and dark,
without caramel or nougat
or peanuts or almonds
to weaken its sour flavor.
I had envisioned the sweetness
the sugar that would linger on my tongue...
I was met with a strong, ugly taste--
a hideous taste--
I couldn't swallow.
I couldn't bring it to my throat.
I chewed it quickly
(I had to finish)
I chewed it, my eyes squeezed shut,
my nose pinched between my pointer finger and thumb.
I gulped it down and flushed out my mouth,
with water, with milk, with soda, with juice, with a spoon of pure white sugar,
but the taste never left; it was there the next day and the next week and the next month and the next year
and the next year, and the next year, and the next--

And the next decade, and the next century,
until I was rotting beneath the ground
until the worms gnawed at my decaying flesh
until I dissolved into dust,
until the dust became earth,
and the Earth became nothing,
and I was nothing, too,
and I simply ceased to be.

But that's how we grow up.

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