Candy

a poem

*One of tough things about living a tough life is the years we spend wondering if we’re truly normal, even after we’ve worked hard to heal things in our lives. It’s amazing to me how sometimes I still downplay my abuse to either protect others, or protect myself from feeling other. That’s what this poem is about.

Candy

I told someone my life story in fifteen.
Bite-sized bits of pain. Worldclass sadness.
It could’ve filled a house. A landfill.
But I packed it into singly-served words
wrapped like candy, twisted edges.
Hard. The kind that cracks, not melts.

I sent the words out like biography, not memoir.
Shards in their mouth, looking for
the spot on their tongue that knows sweetness.
I wondered what they tasted like to them.
Healing or hope.
Heaven. Or Hell.

Maybe I was trying to save them time,
or save them from me.
Or tired of the telling, and
dying to seem… normal.
Sweet, not sad.
Someone who learned to make candy.

I’ve been thinking about that fifteen for twenty-four.
About my candy-life held in deep pockets—
felt with fingertips, hands brushing the stories
while speaking to strangers.
Knowing the man I’ve become, yet
still wondering things about myself.

Things like…

Am I what I think I am—
or what I’ve told myself to be?
Can’t they see how regular? How… same as them?
There’s the bite-sized bits, sure…
but they’ve been carried gently in timeworn pockets.
And I’ve turned it all into candy.