I walk down sugar-coated streets,
stumbling over rumor weeds poking up through the cracks
and fearing the whispers that I think I hear.

I watch the candy people walking around,
******* each other dry one way or another
like leeches with sweet teeth.

They make sour faces,
like ******* lime soda through a Sour Punch Straw,
but they keep *******, because there’s nothing else to do in Candyland.

I have to look really hard to find the sweet people.
The gummy ones, the melt in your mouth chocolate ones.
Sometimes I find them half-eaten and discarded like office lollipops
and sometimes they’re melting under everyone’s Red Hot gaze.

Sometimes I only find wrappers
and I get so angry that I think I might melt myself.
Because these people have been eaten.

******, nibbled, gulped down
like nothing more than a quick Kiss that means nothing.
But no matter how small they were, they still mattered.

They mattered to someone,
but now they’re just slick remnants on cellophane or foil.
And what hurts even more is that I couldn’t save them.

I’m not Princess Bubblegum,
I can’t protect a candy kingdom.
But that doesn’t mean I can’t try.