when he grows up
he'll be a chocolatier, he supposes.
yes, a chocolatier.
what dim light holds money
compared with the brilliance of cocoa's richness?
many times he traded a crisp dollar bill
to the cashier, for a Hershey's bar —
the cashier, he knew, had drawn the shorter straw.
he could not understand big people
in their big buildings
with their big cups of coffee,
aching with bitterness all day long.
what they needed, after all, was a bar of chocolate.
what do you like to do? they'd ask him, those big bitter people.
sometimes he wondered the same thing —
what did they like to do?
did they like to sit at their big desks
and hope for bigger checks, someday?
he knew what he liked to do.
“i like to make people happy,” he told them,
“and i like to eat chocolate.”
they laughed at him, sometimes.
he didn't think it was funny,
but he liked to see them smile.
"would you like some chocolate?" he'd ask.
they would look confused, almost
like they weren't sure he was talking to them.
they said sure, they wouldn't mind some
chocolate, and he
would give those big people
a little piece of chocolate.
but their eyes would ask him what their
mouths would not:
why?
he was practicing, he said,
to be a chocolatier.