Metaphor: my skin and my hair taste like cocoa.
Real life: grandparents kiss under trees heavy with cocoa.
As girls, we’d creak down the steep Dutch stairs,
return with mugs bursting with creamy hot cocoa.
To decline, to refuse, dig in one’s heels, to resist like a
small dog its leash—I find that gesture so alluring, such a sweet, guilty
pleasure.
Because he was already dying, he figured
there was no harm in huffing through 2 or 3 cigarettes
in the early morning before my mother would wake—
the animal of his thin, brown body lassoed
to an oxygen tank.
I was diagnosed with breast cancer.
One month later, my son was hit
and killed by a late model, blue Ford F150 truck.
My former therapist said I was being struck
by the perfect storm.
Found one of these ‘facts’ just cruising the WWW, spent the morning looking for more and ended up with two pages. Let the whole mess sit for a while, then as Rodin said, I ‘knocked away anything’ that wasn’t poem. They are all ‘true’ except one; I’ve forgotten which.