ROCK CANDY
I will never know why I never ate rock candyagain. To be fair, I only ate it once–I bought
it in the pharmacy on 2nd Avenue and it came
in a beautiful blue box with orange trim and
I remember the crunchy sound that it made
as I chewed and nibbbled it on its short white
string. It was a pretty Saturday afternoon.
Slightly out of focus and behind
the rock candy’s crystalline form
and reflective prisms,
a beautiful young girl waits impatiently
at the counter while her mother buys her
a Lime Rickey. “Some day,” I think to myself,
“Some day I will marry that little girl,
and we will grow old together and have
children and grandchildren and a lovely home
and then we will get divorced, or, perhaps,
not.”
And yet none of this would ever come true.
In fact, I didn’t even actually chew and nibble
on the rock candy that day; I took a long look
at it, became terribly frightened, and threw it
in the rubbish bin as quietly as I could, running
away without looking up, without looking at
the rubbish bin, or the mother, or the pharmacist,
or that beautiful young girl sticking her tongue
out at me, all lime green and soft and pearly and
delicious and laughing and just chock filled with
knowledge and hate.
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