the total volume
of my mind is a peanut
of huge proportion

Sometimes I lie
When people ask me those questions
Like “who inspires you the most”
Or “what is the most influential thing to have happened in your life”
Sometimes I talk about
Women in science
Or growing up adopted
Or being a struggling reader when I was in third grade
I never talk about my mom
I never talk about feeling like I had missing pieces
Not just in my heart but in my mind
Like someone pulled out the naughty things
The bad things
Leaving me with only leftovers.  
When people ask me for my best story
Sometimes I talk about how
I faked a peanut allergy
And how a boy stabbed me with an epipen when I ate a peanut butter malt in front of him
Thinking he was saving my life.
I usually avoid the part
About me wishing that those drugs were lethal
That an epipen could end it all.
I find small talk to be so hard
Because there aren’t enough good bits inside me
To make it through a conversation.
If you see me
Can you just do that thing
Where we make eye contact and nod slightly
Smiling sometimes and not stopping.
I don’t have anything
Truthful left to say.

Chocolate Addict
Caramel, Reese's Pieces
Outrageous You Are

lights in our northern souls
we chew peanut butter sandwiches
and contemplate our existences
the future is sticky
and the past is honey-brown
that glues our teeth together
we swallow our words
and drown in the light

Nervous that way I take peanut butter from the jar
where blinking and licking overlap
messily and focus is the last thing on
my mind.

There, just there scooped
is where the thought
returns.

No high flying; no explanation
just back, and the jar gets
put on the shelf of the
cupboard
of wood, the oldest part of the house,
and I cannot recall to write it the smell of
peanuts jarred and ant poison and southern
yellow
pine.