aunt gert used to tell me
tomatoes tasted sweet, like dessert, not like now, like nothing;
the chicken tasted like chicken.
i get it. sometimes in a bag of baby carrots there’s a carrot that almost makes me weep.
i keep my mouth shut but think to tell my babies about the soaring disney movie trope and snowflakes you ate straight out of the sky without a flicker about what they’d passed through,
that sound was a car backfiring, and east was where the sun came up.
i think to tell them how life for a long time was five years old; mid-nightmare and that swift enfolding,
a soft voice telling you everything’s okay,
and you settle back to sleep, believing it.