Cardboard cookies

Ther's a cardboard cookie on the table 
that tastes like Middle School
it is warm in my stomach as
cold crumbs line clammy calluses
But it still yields to my teeth as I bite
too much stale worries and never enough chocolate
It is the little photobook that is bitter
on my tongue, but tastes of decadent
strands of summer caught on ivy
webs, we call cafeteria tables
A past & a prophesy
of lost melodies folded in lonely books
for the next sixth grader 
who sucked on apple lollipops of drama
mouth puckeringly addictive
and of boys that whispered carelessly in halls
for all to hear of the insurmountable feat of
tricking overpriced vending machines for bags of 

                            air

because part of us knew High School, the Beyond
would be hard of oxygen
So, there's a cardboard cookie on the table
no longer mine to eat
warm, bright, overpriced
it tastes just like middle school
 

amaryllis

CA

YWP Alumni

More by amaryllis

  • Forgotten altars

    You blink and look and stare
    and stare

    As if trying to find the snag in the dream
    the catch in the sweater
    the cards hidden up someone's sleeves

    The meaning of this miracle that tapped you on the elbow
  • You, Tree

    As I sit on this stump and read
    from these pages of your cousin's pulped flesh,
    I burst with the excitement of next year seeing you draped in color,

    You. master of graceful loss.

    You, vessels of wasted breaths,
  • spiraling

    Spiraling odes of love and loss,
    lost pages strewn on the desk and the floor and the eyes and the sky and my limbs,
    each one with a piece of myself I do not want to see anymore.

    what have I created?