A Taste of Me

Hi! I'm new to this community. In this poem, my life is a menu, and butter is the main ingredient.

The first bite lingers, a laugh in a room full of strangers, the kind that disappears as quickly as it came
Smells like nostalgia rotting on the stove, warm, familiar, but something’s always a bit off

The illusion of being wanted

A hand reaching out, not to hold but to own.

A touch that brands me instead of soothe, with my life in bold font and my regrets as its logo.

Tastes like sweetness that turned sour, like a smile you forced so long it curdled and left nothing but creepy lumps. 

Roller coasters, confusing fear for excitement because that’s the only type of love I’ve ever known

Spreads onto bread like trauma onto memory, like bad things on a good day, like scars hidden beneath silk, like poison stirred into tea with trembling hands.

Intrusive memories I can’t tell apart from a nightmare, they flood the senses, I can’t tell if everything that happened led to me making them up or if they shaped everything into what it is. Can’t tell what’s real and what’s just a thought, what’s true and what’s not

The second course arrives, heavier,

The weight of my own body in a mirror I can’t look away from

I keep trying to move, to change, to run

But my past clings like a second skin

Feels like a spread knife with no mercy, one that keeps digging at my throat, never deep enough to end it, just deep enough to silence me, a spread knife gentle only in appearance, but its glide slices soft flesh in ways no one sees

Softens too easily, always ready to lose its shape for someone else’s comfort

I call it progress;

It calls me a liar

Looks like happiness, golden, soft, inviting, until it melts into everything and drips sizzling between your legs

It melts like sanity under pressure, slow, irreversible, leaving everything greasy with what it once was.

For my drink I’d like a glass of dissociation 

I’d like it served chilled, with a cracked reflection on the side.

No refills, this drink can fill me.

To keep me smiling, even when my lips don’t feel mine anymore. 

Coats the tongue like apologies I never meant but said anyways, just to be left alone.

Sounds like silence coated in fat, thick, slow, impossible to swallow without gagging.

And tastes better when it’s salted, like kindness with conditions, like affection with an aftertaste, like saying I love you with your teeth clenched and your eyes shut.

There’s comfort in the quiet after the storm,

but it’s the kind of peace that tastes like regret.

A silence so thick it feels like a hug, not comfort really, just the absence of more pain

The numbness I feed like a pet

And no matter what I throw in its way it keeps asking for more,

because if I don’t feed it smoke, sex, lies, pain, chaos, fights, I’m afraid it would just eat me alive.

Sticks to the roof of your mouth like guilty pleasure you can’t spit out

And maybe I’ll let it eat me, because being hollow is the closest thing to safe I’ve ever felt.

My life is a fine dining experience,

each course served is carefully plated, so each flavor and every bite is a reminder of the price I pay for being alive.