UNDERGROUND VOICES MAGAZINE/REBECCA SCHUMEJDA


	UNDERGROUND VOICES: POETRY

REBECCA SCHUMEJDA

Flowers Remind me of Going Crazy

so I bring you chocolates instead.
My mother has been locked in before,
like gelatinous fillings, the way you are now.
Believing I will be next,
I drink to forget our similarities.
You use your eyeteeth
to break through the chocolate surface,
the way the doctors use their reasoning
to get inside of you.
You change sides between each candy,
clenching your corresponding eyelid.
You take in cherry and peppermint,
but spit out caramels as if they were
bitter pills or the truth, you don’t want to hear.
There is nothing that I can say;
I do not really care; someone has to cut
the stems of flowers; someone has to
scribble down rational explanations
to contradict your behavior. I bring
you a pair of jeans, that don’t fit me,
since the nurses won’t let you shave; the
summer heat taunts your sanity like
a child does to the dog locked behind
a chain linked fence. We are all guilty
of being antagonistic.
I admit I didn’t want to come.
I have turned buttery after my father’s death,
so fat with others’ needs that I keep
laxatives in my front pocket, my cherry
cyanide to rid them from me. I don’t give a crap
if you tell anyone; they all think you’re crazy, anyway.
Before I leave, I whisper inaudibly
into your ear, just so I can be close enough
to suck the sorrow out, but you push away.
You begin to pluck one leg hair at a time,
as I once did to hyacinth petals, powdery promises.
“He loves me; he loves me not,”
you chant rocking back and forth
on the balls of your feet; each blonde strand
a petal in the wind blowing away;
a juxtaposition to my dreams
where my bloody gums spit out my teeth, one by one;
people leave this world behind them.