Throughout our childhood, our grandmother would turn to us,
in her yellow-lit kitchen, brandishing a rubber spatula or meat
tenderizer to warn us against falling to temptation. She’d witnessed
too many good people disappear into what she called
a consumption of the soul,

              and as my cousins licked sugary batter off their spoons,
no one could have known that one day the candy-coating
would melt from their eyes to see their mother
for what she had done the last six years that now showed in her trembling hands, glossed vision, and a temperament that splashed into anger, flowed into melancholy as easily as she had found herself downing bleary bubbles at the brim of a precipiced fountain.
She was promised her very own message in a bottle, and this keep-sake

manifested in cousin Libby’s dreams, floating down a wine river
that gushed from the slashes in her mother’s wrists. Somehow I knew
these nightmares were born from warm and heady “sleep well”s
mumbled from across the darkest of rooms which held so many glass
ghouls with names and strengths so real, they even scared

my grandmother into silence as she stirred the pecan pie for Easter dinner. She offered to let me lick the spoon clean, but I simply
asked for straight sugar instead.

Some days I long to be held,
and others the thought of someone even shaking my hand makes me cringe
I still can feel hands on my throat
and the touch of an unwanted, wandering hand.

Years have gone by,
Yet the ghostly haunting of your lips on mine will not fade.
But hell, I "wanted it anyway"
I wonder how in the hell you looked into my sobbing eyes,
and decided that turned you on.

But it was my fault for wearing shorts instead of pants,
despite the 93 degree mid-July heat.

After you were done
You held me and asked for me to call you back.
You left me crying by the road side,
With my hair in knots and dirt on my new white shirt
Hours passed as I tried to walk yet couldn't because my whole body felt numb,

My best friend laughed, "nice hickies on your neck"
I cringed inside and had to lie,
hoping no one would ever know those hickies where the bruises you left when I tried to scream.